With the T. Ritchie wrapper

Mittelholzer, Edgar ~ A Morning At The Office

First UK Printing : The Hogarth Press, London : 1950

The First UK Printing published by The Hogarth Press, London in 1950. 8vo., green cloth gilt to spine, upper top-stain green; complete in the striking pictorial wrapper designed by T. Ritchie ; The BOOK with a slight lean to text block; Small bookshop sticker to the rear paste-down; previous owner’s neat stamp to the front free endpaper ‘Please return to James K. Feibleman’; a very small abrasion to the front paste-down. A very Good++ copy, otherwise. The unusually bright WRAPPER also in Very Good++ condition which has some even toning, and some small nicks and losses to the head and foot of the spine; the lower panel has one small closed tear to head (no more than 2 cm in length). The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. Considered by some to be the most prolific novelist of the Caribbean, Edgar Mittelhӧlzer was born in Guyana in 1909, and published his first work Creole Chips in 1937, but it was not until 1941, when Corentyne Thunder found a UK publisher in Eyre and Spottiswoode that he found a wide and receptive audience for his writing. Due to his typing job at the British Council, he was able to forge a series of friendships and professional relationships with some of England’s greatest literary figures, including Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press who first published this, A Morning at the Office, in 1950. The novel was controversial for its depictions of varying characters; set in a Trinidadian office, it included Chinese, East Indian and Black Trinidadians, as well as a sympathetic portrayal of a gay man. Mittelhӧlzer was opposed to the Colonial Guyanese Government from a young age, and these themes resurface in the novel, which focuses on Colonialism colourism and classism. Known professionally as 'T. Ritchie', Trekkie Ritchie Parsons (née Marjorie Tulip Ritchie) was an English artist and lithographer, and also the lover of Leonard Woolf after his wife Virginia's death. A lovely copy.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good++
JACKET: Very Good++