CIDER WITH ROSIE

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy. Publisher's original green cloth with gilt lettering to the spine, in dustwrapper. Illustrated with line drawings by John Ward. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt fresh. Minor softening to spine tips. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's marks.Tiny mark to the fore-edge of the closed text block. Complete with the clean and bright dustwrapper showing just a touch of rubbing to corners and tips. Not price-clipped (18s. net to the front flap). A particularly attractive example.

Inscribed by the author in blue ink to the title page, "Inscribed for / Ray Cole / with best wishes / from / Laurie Lee". The recipient is the veteran Chelsea bookseller, Ray Cole. Lee and his wife moved back to Slad, the village in Gloucestershire where he grew up, during the 1960s, but he always kept his Chelsea flat, doing much of his writing there during the week and returning to Slad for weekends. This is the first issue of Lee's great account of his childhood in Slad, containing the (subsequently suppressed) passage on p. 272 describing the fire at the piano-works.