Search Results: Titles starting with U from Neil Pearson Rare Books

London: Hutchinson, N.d. [1938]. 8vo, pp. 408, 8pp. catalogue of Wheatley titles and 24pp. publisher's catalogue bound in at rear. Original black boards, lettered in gilt to spine, publisher's name in gilt to front board. Map endpapers. Spine ends a little bumped, otherwise a near fine copy in a very good dust jacket, some light general edgewear, and an unobtrusive 1cm closed tear to top edge of rear panel. Dust jacket and endpapers design by Diana Younger. First edition, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR: 'For W. Royden, with the best of good wishes from his friend Dennis Wheatley'. Walter Royden (born Walter Smith) worked in publishing, and was the father of the actor Auriol Smith. An early Wheatley title, a lost world novel, and the basis for Hammer's The Lost Continent (1968), directed by Michael Carreras and starring Eric Porter and Hildergard Knef. Inscribed, in the dust jacket, and rare.

New York: Didier, 1948. 8vo, pp. 312. Original red boards, lettered in silver to spine, facsimile signature in silver to front panel. A fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper, with two short closed tears and a single small chip to foot of spine. First US edition, published five weeks after its UK counterpart. The second Uncle Fred novel. Uncle Dynamite was the first book Wodehouse had published in the United States following his split from Doubleday: 'He blamed the move on 'the Doubleday organisation', which, he felt, was a 'huge factory' that did not care about his books.... In England, Uncle Dynamite sold as well as Spring Fever, but in America, despite Didier's efforts, sales were not enhanced...' (McCrum) McIlvaine A68b

London: Herbert Jenkins, 1939. 8vo, pp. 311. 3 pp. advertisements bound in at rear. Original red boards, lettered in gilt to spine. illustrated dustwrapper. Dustwrapper illustration by Fenwick. First UK edition, published on 25 August 1939; the US edition appeared one week earlier. Serialised in Saturday Evening Post in April/May of that year. 'Uncle Fred was an afterthought, a late-1930s addition to Wodehouse's world, an irrepressible bounder of sixty-something whom Wodehouse saw as 'a sort of elderly Psmith'.... [He] would be one of Wodehouse's most enduring heroes, later starring in Uncle Dynamite (1948), Cocktail Time (1958), and Service With A Smile (1962). But in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, he gets his name in the title, a sure indication of Wodehouse's delight in his company.' A very nice copy in the scarce dustwrapper. McIlvaine A61b