Blindness

London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1926. Hardcover. First Edition. 8vo. vii. 254pp. + 8pp. ads. Bound in the original blue cloth with blind-stamped publisher device on the front board. Blue top stain. Housed in a one quarter leather over cloth slipcase with gilt titling and date. Signed by the author with inscription on the endpaper: 'For James Hanley from Henry Green 11/7/31.' Green and Hanley shared an undeserved obscurity within English modernist literature, as well as a deep mutual admiration for each other's work. Green put forth Hanley as superior to Conrad. The novelist and critic Harold Heslop, while lamenting the state of British literature, was relieved by the emergence of what he called a 'new school of writers' of 'proletarian stock.' Christopher Isherwood would call Green's second novel Living, 'the best proletarian novel ever written' and V.S. Pritchett would place him in 'the mad tradition in English literature - Sterne, Carroll, Firbank, and Mrs. Woolf.' An important association. The book with shelf rubbing along the edges and corners, spine somewhat toned, top edge lightly rubbed, the endpapers with peculiar light violet off-setting of some kind though unobtrusive, otherwise the binding is strong and tight, the text is clean and unmarked, and the boards remain colorful and distinct. The slipcase with several light scuffs. As pictured.