The Golden Notebook

London: Michael Joseph, 1962. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine-/Fine-. First Impression of the Nobel laureate's "indispensable" masterpiece, significant "as the most massive statement made, up to that time, on the position of woman in the modern world." (Burgess). Tall, thick 8vo: 568pp. Publisher's black boards, spine lettered in gilt; first-issue typographic dust jacket (photograph of Lessing to rear panel) designed by William Belcher, priced 30s. About Fine (dust-soiled edges, mild offsetting to end papers), square, tight, probably unread; about Fine jacket (lightly dust soiled back panel, several edge nicks), still vibrant and bright. Time 100. Burgess 99. p.86. NYPL Books of the Century, p.130. Callil and Toibin 52. "Anna Wulf is a writer who keeps four notebooks, each a different color, each reflecting a different part of her. The black one contains recollections of her youthful wartime years in West Africa . . . In the red one she reflects on her later life in London's leftist and intellectual circles. The blue notebook analyzes her fraught relations with men. The yellow contains her fragmentary attempts at new fiction. With the fifth, the golden notebook, and with The Golden Notebook, Wulf/Lessing struggles to tie all the threads fearlessly back together again. All the currents of her time flow through Anna—Marx and Freud and the burgeoning dissatisfactions among women that would eventually explode into feminism. Lessing's earnestness can be too much at times, but as a portrait of a woman coming to grips with the realities of her time her book is indispensable." (Time 100) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.