A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

First printing of the first Ben Jones illustrated Folio edition. Publisher's original black snakeskin textured boards blocked in iridescent brown to the upper board and spine, in the black card slipcase. Illustrated throughout with a frontispiece and six full page colour plates after paintings by Ben Jones. With an introduction by Irvine Welsh. A fine, as new copy.

Burgess regularly expressed frustration at the disproportionate attention garnered by 'A Clockwork Orange'. The novel, he later recalled, "fell into a great silence, as many books do" following its publication in 1962, "but then a film was made of it ten years later, and [...] my trouble began". The film, of course, was Stanley Kubrick's infamous 1971 adaptation starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex (Andy Warhol had earlier adapted the book for his film 'Vinyl' in 1965), and the "trouble" was being "accused of fomenting violence, rape, mayhem, as it were, because of this film and because of the book it was based on". Burgess was ambivalent about the very aspects of the book that made it famous. "It was certainly no pleasure to me to describe acts of violence" he recalled in 1972, later expressing the more nuanced view that "I was sickened by my own excitement at setting it down". It is the book's language, however, that makes it so extraordinary, "nadsat", the vivid Anglo-American-Slavic language used by its characters generating its remarkable energy (and indeed violence). Burgess began writing the book upon his return to Britain from Malaya and Brunei in 1960 (he was an education officer for the Colonial Service) and it also reflects the author's reaction to a pop and youth culture (including violent clashes between Mods and Rockers) that he was experiencing for the first time after being away for six years.