THE DESERT HORIZON

First edition, first printing. Original yellow cloth, lettered and ruled in brown to spine and front panel, with the publisher's monogram to the rear panel, in the G. S. Brien designed dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Lower textblock edges untrimmed. There is a small area of erosion to the upper spine tip (3mm deep and 2cm wide) and a couple of nicks to the lower tip; the upper edges are a touch darkened. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's inscriptions or stamps. The dustwrapper, with a little chipping at the head of the spine, some rubbing to corners and folds, and a 1cm closed tear to the lower edge of the upper spine fold, is in very good shape. Correctly priced 7s. 6d. net to the front flap. An attractive example of a very scarce title in dustwrapper.

The third of Grant Watson's six Australian novels, important for their pioneering use of the desert as a metaphor for the Jungian subconscious and prefigured aspects of the works of such Australian writers as Katharine Susannah Prichard, Patrick White and Randolph Stow, particularly in their early sympathy with Aboriginal and environmental interpretations of the landscape. "[a] story of the borderland of the Australian Desert. Martin O'Brien grows from childhood to youth and from youth to manhood in close intimacy with the arid, sun-stricken land. [...] The Desert Horizon almost encloses him when at last he meets with human love, so different from the impersonal though direct appeal of that untamed country; this is the beginning of a struggle that can only end when life ends" (from the jacket).