THE GIRLS OF RADCLIFF HALL

Limited edition reissue of this notorious roman à clef, privately printed and circulated by Berners in 1935 under the pseudonym Adela Quebec. Publisher's quarter green cloth with gilt titles to the spine and patterned paper covered boards, in dustwrapper. Frontispiece caricature of (and previously owned by) the author, after a painting by Emilio Coia, one further illustration of the front cover of the original edition. Top edge green. A fine copy, the binding square and tight, bright and fresh. The contents, with the pencilled name and date of James Booth (former Professor of English at the University of Hull and the biographer, editor and former colleague of Philip Larkin) on the front free endpaper, are otherwise clean throughout. Complete with the fine original dustwrapper that remains without fading, loss or tears.

This reissue, with an introduction and postscript by John Byrne was printed in an edition of 750 copies, 250 of which copies were reserved for the American market. The present example is the UK issue. 'The Girls of Radcliff Hall' is a spoof of Radclyffe Hall's banned lesbian novel 'The Well of Loneliness' written in the style of an Angela Brazil girl's school story. Berners depicts himself as the headmistress Miss Carfax and (drawing on incidents at Faringdon) mocks the jealousies and intrigues of his homosexual circle as thinly disguised members of the Radcliff Hall girls' school.