FALL OF MAN

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Original red cloth with gilt lettering to the spine, in dustwrapper. A better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean without inscriptions or stamps. There is some mottling (perhaps a light liquid stain) visible to the front board, and a bump to the upper outer corner of the same panel. Minimal spotting to the fore-edge of the page block. The moderately worn, price-clipped dustwrapper is lightly soiled and spotted (recto and verso), with some rubbing, nicks and a couple of short closed tears to edges and folds.

Signed by the author Rupert Croft-Cooke in blue ink to the front free endpaper. Croft-Cooke's 1955 novel is a veiled autobiographical narrative in which the main protagonist, Antony Scaw, a heterosexual painter, is victimised by a prudish society. The author had been imprisoned on a charge of gross indecency in 1953 (recounted in the memoir, 'The Verdict of You All' published in the same year as 'Fall of Man').