The Wild Goose Chase
Boriswood, September 1937. First Edition. Hardcover. Used - Good / Good. Item #239892
ISBN: B000FMLMVY
First U.K. edition heavily darkened, damp stained, edgeworn dustjacket. Not price clipped. Original British price -- 8s. 6d. -- on front flap. Blue cloth covered boards with gold lettering on spine & front board. Boards light-faded at bottom & top edges. Somewhat darkened along spine. Binding is sound. Textblock edges darkened, especially at top edge. Tanning & foxing to end pages. Foxing/dark spots scattered through book. This is the first novel & third book by this sadly underrated British novelist, classicist, poet and more, Rex Warner (1905 -1986). The best writing were his first three modernist novels: this brilliant debut, The Aerodrome (1941), and The Professor (1938). They are easily dismissed as 'Kafkaesque', as if that was an easy thing to be, with language as precise as what Warner achieves so early in his career. Along with his contemporary British writers Edward Upward (1903 - 2009) and William Samson (1912 - 1976) a small group of authors turned into a small nameless movement that is sadly all but forgotten. Warner's Aerodrome is remembered mostly for its inclusion in Anthony Burgess' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice, a selection which also includes William Samson's The Body. The Wild Goose chase was preceded by a children's book The Kite and a small collection of poetry. He also wrote (but was not credited at the time) Cecil Day Lewis' We're not going to do NOTHING: A reply to Aldous Huxley's 'What are you going to do about it?', a political tract I have not read but hope to get around to soon! After publishing Aerodrome in 1941 most of the books Warner published for the rest of his career were historical novels set in the classical era. Such works as Men of Stone (1949) and Young Caesar (1958) were excellent, but something of a disappointment to those of us looking for more books in the mode of Aerodrome and The Wild Goose Chase.
Used Book
Price: $100.00
