Metroland by Barnes, Julian - 1980

London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1980. First Edition, 1st Impression . Hardcover. Very Good+/Very Good+. Signed by the author on title page, complete with wraparound band but band is sunned on spine

London: Jonathan Cape, 1980. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Impression ("First published 1980") of Barnes's first novel. Crown 8vo (197 x 125mm): 176pp. Publisher's steel-grey cloth, spine stamped in silver, grey end papers; black typographic dust jacket (priced-clipped) printed in metallic silver and white. Signed book plate of Otis Skinner Blodget (1930-2007), only child of actress and author Cornelia Otis Skinner, laid in. Virtually pristine and apparently unread, a very fine copy. Rees A1a. In 1980, after a prolonged apprenticeship (on staff at the Oxford English Dictionary, reviewing books for the Times Literary Supplement, and as literary editor of the New Statesman), Barnes published this short novel, a charming Bildungsroman centered on a young man growing up in London's northern suburbs (in 1956, Barnes's family moved from Leicester to Northwood, a suburb served by London Underground's Metropolitan line and thus the "Metroland" of his title), obsessed with France (where Barnes… Read More

E-130: Jonathan Cape. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1980. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Jonathan Cape, London. 1980. 176 pages. Signed by Julian Barnes on the title page. First Edition/First Printing. Craig Dodd designed silver lettered DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in bright silver lettered grey cloth. Bookplate present to the reverse of the front board. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards very lightly rubbed and worn. The adolescent Christopher and his soul mate Toni had sneered at the stifling ennui of Metroland, their cosy patch of suburbia on the Metropolitan line. They had longed for Life to begin - meaning Sex and Freedom - to travel and choose their own clothes. Then Chris, at thirty, starts to settle comfortably into bourgeois contentment himself. Luckily, Toni is still around to challenge such backsliding. Only the author of Flaubert's Parrot could give us a novel that is at once a… Read More