20th Century Classics

Happy Valley – Patrick White

Nobel Laureate Patrick White had Happy Valley published in the UK in 1939. During his life he refused to allow the book to be re-published. So, it took to this issue published by the unusual Text Publishing of Melbourne in 2012 for it to appear as a second edition.

Octavo, 407 pages plus catalogue, decorative endpapers. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.

White had spent time at a station in New South Wales as a jackaroo. He was not cut out for it. Nevertheless, the experience provided rather useful in writing this book … he had lived a colourful life to that stage and that would continue. Drawing on writers he had met and admired – Joyce, Woolf, DHL etc this is a complex novel of an exceptional standard.

Patrick White and his Happy Valley full of character and intrigue.

$40.00

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The Secret Pilgrim – John le Carre – First Edition 1991

A very nice first edition published by Hodder, London in 1991.

Follows the Russia House and the Karla trilogy and despite the whole of Smiley, some believe, and we do, that this was his best book to date.

Octavo, 335 pages a better than very good copy.

Smiley and Ned in their final years up in Scotland at the training college for spies. The format of the book uses a simple ploy “reminiscences” to produce in effect a book of perfectly connected short stories. The language and plot exceptional from the beginning to the gracious end.

John le Carre – hard for us to say but this one puts him ahead of Greene – his template so to speak = wonderful reading

$40.00

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James Joyce’s Ulysses – Clive Hart

We doubt if there is any book ever published that requires more explanation and assistance on reading than Ulysses. Deliberately so. Joyce himself struggled with the corrections and many errors still remain – dependent what an error is in the context of Ulysses. Note that that should put anyone off reading the best mots confusing book of at least the 20th Century.

Octavo, 186 pages, very good condition Expert, Clive Hart published his work in 1968 through the Sydney University Press – part of their Sydney Studies in Literature series.

Ulysses by Hart – get it and understand it better

$30.00

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Absalom, Absalom – William Faulkner

One of the great Modern Library Editions. Pretty good condition in slightly chipped dust jacket with slight age marks to back.

Nobel Prize winning author whose incredible narratives centred on the American South … Superb work and includes the longest grammatically correct sentence in literature at page 181 (1292 words … phew)

Unsurpassed Faulkner

$30.00

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In the Great White Land (A Tale of the Antarctic Ocean) – Gordan Stables

Published by Blackie, London in the early 1930’s.

Octavo, 288 pages thick spongy paper and despite the spongy quite clean with some marks to the extreme per edge. Coloured frontispiece and three full page illustrations. Prize label on front end papers. Rare in the striking illustrated dust jacket.

Three stories and despite the subtitle starts with … “Far Away in the Frozen North” an Arctic adventure on the good barque Walrus and the oft frozen Captain Mayne Brace (great pun). Story two “Under the Southern Cross” requires no clue as to the general location with many icy encounters. Finally “On the Great Antarctic Continent” and the beauty and marvel of the Ice-Cave. The sledging journey across the tableland and the dash for the pole takes its lead from the great Heroic Era accounts.

Adventure in the frozen South – very South.

$80.00

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The Foundation Trilogy [Foundation: Foundation and Empire: Second Foundation] and then The Stars, Like Dust; The Naked sun; I Robot – Complete & Unabridged – Isaac Asimov

A monster collection including Isaac Asimov’s greatest work the Foundation Trilogy and more all in one place.

This is a Book Club edition in association with the principal’s Heinemann, Secker and Octopus Book. Issued in 1982. Extra thick octavo, 863 pages. A very slight even tone to the pages due to the nature of the paper very clean throughout – an unread copy we suspect. Binding and dust wrapper very good. Too heavy for overseas without a postage supplement.

Asimov won the Hugo Award for BEST ALL Time Science Fiction Series with the trilogy … the Galactic empire crumbles but one man creates a new force for civilised life … it gets complicated.

And at the very end I, Robot … given the explosion of AI makes this a must read or a read again.

Asimov – his best stuff – will keep you going through the winter.

$50.00

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Happy Valley – Patrick White

The Secret Pilgrim – John le Carre – First Edition 1991

James Joyce’s Ulysses – Clive Hart

Absalom, Absalom – William Faulkner

In the Great White Land (A Tale of the Antarctic Ocean) – Gordan Stables

The Foundation Trilogy [Foundation: Foundation and Empire: Second Foundation] and then The Stars, Like Dust; The Naked sun; I Robot – Complete & Unabridged – Isaac Asimov

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