GRAHAM GREENE FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : William Heinemann, (1934). First edition. Greene’s first overtly political novel – “the injustice of man’s justice” – in some sense an inversion of the traditional detective story, as a communist London bus-driver awaits his hanging. “Mr Greene has a reputation for unconventional composition ... he has adopted methods more familiar in the cinema than in fiction. He uses close-ups and long shots and panoramas, and the action is seen through the camera-eye of each spectator in turn” (The Scotsman, 15th February 1934).
Crown 8vo (174 x 111mm). [viii],(276),[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half red morocco; original cloth backstrip preserved at rear; some spotting of edges, but a very good copy.

£400

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London : William Heinemann, (1943). First edition. Greene’s powerful evocation of London in the blitz – a spy thriller full of guilt, menace and deceit. Informed by his work at the Ministry of Information – and turned into the 1944 Fritz Lang film noir, with Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds.
Crown 8vo (182 x 118mm). [vi],236,[ii]pp. Bound in a smart recent half black morocco, banded and gilt; some spotting of edges and prelims, but otherwise a very good and attractive copy of a difficult wartime Greene.

£400

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London : William Heinemann, (1951). First edition. Adultery and broken hearts in Clapham – the basis of both the 1955 film with Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson, and the 1999 film with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes. “For me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody’s language” (William Faulkner, in a letter to his UK publisher).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [vi],(238)pp. Original grey cloth, lettered in gilt; some tanning of outer leaves; a few edge spots; slight flaw to final leaf, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket lightly tanned, but with just minimal wear and a couple of slight nicks, and also very good.

£250

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London : William Heinemann, (1955). First edition. “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused”. Western involvement in Indo-China – twice filmed, with Audie Murphy and Michael Redgrave in 1958, and with Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine in 2002 – the book which made Greene a CIA suspect for the remainder of his life. “It is disturbing when the critics hail a novel as masterly with one voice, and then relapse into total disagreement about it ... a problem novel. Already there have been conflicting views on what is supposed to happen, let alone what we should think” (Illustrated London News, 14th January 1956).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],(248)pp. Original blue-grey cloth, lettered in gilt; some spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket just faintly tanned as usual, with a few spots to flaps and lower panel, and a crease to the back flap, but complete and otherwise also very good, with just one tiny chip.

£200

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London : Bodley Head, (1969). First edition. “I met my Aunt Augusta for the first time in more than half a century at my mother’s funeral ...”. On Greene’s own admission, the only one of his books written “just for the fun of it” – memorably filmed in 1972 by George Cukor, with Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, etc.
Post 8vo (21cm). (320)pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; a couple of edge-spots, but a very good copy in the original pictorial Stephen Russ dust-jacket – the jacket price-clipped but also very good.

£100

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London : Bodley Head, (1971). First edition. An illuminating segment of autobiography, taking Greene’s life past his first encounter with espionage and up to his first genuine success with the publication of “Stamboul Train” in 1932 — complete with the changes in the text made off the cuff from a telephone box to ward off a threatened libel action from J. B. Priestley. “I have tried, however unsuccessfully, to live again the follies and sentimentalities and exaggerations of the distant time, and to feel them, as I felt them then, without irony”.
Post 8vo (21cm). [2],(216),[vi]pp. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt; top edge grey; a very good bright clean and sound copy in the Michael Harvey dust-jacket — the jacket just a touch tanned and with some minuscule wear to the extremities, but also very good.

£50

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