Age of Consent

New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1938). 1st (U.S.) edition. Hardcover. [good sound copy with light shelfwear, miniscule bumping to a couple of corners; jacket a little worn and slightly creased along top edge, with a few other tiny edge-nicks, fading to spine, tiny chip at base of spine, diagonal white scrape mark on front panel]. (line drawings) Somewhat risque comic novel -- "Rabelaisian" is the preferred term, I believe -- by this Australian artist-illustrator, about a curmudgeonly artist living with his dog, Edmund, in a shanty on a remote beach. He only wants to be left alone to paint seascapes, but has his idyllic paradise increasingly compromised -- first by the appearance of a nubile (and scantily clad) teen-age girl, who he immediately recognizes as an ideal model/muse, and subsequently by a gaggle of eccentric characters, including the girl's gin-swilling grandmother and a runaway bank clerk. Lindsay was somewhat of a literary bad boy of his day, having already experienced some censorship difficulties with several of his previous novels; this one, in fact, was not published in Australia until 1962. The book was filmed in 1969 by Michael Powell (one of his last movies), with Helen Mirren (one of her first) beguiling artist James Mason. .