FIREWORKS: Nine Profane Pieces.

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Original violet cloth with silver lettering to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by The Green Bay Packers Art Co. Black and white photographic portrait of the author to the rear panel. Violet endpapers. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents bright, clean and without inscriptions or stamps. There are a few light spots to the top edge of the page block, and one or two more to the fore- and lower-edges. The wonderfully vibrant dustwrapper is bright, clean and, except for some light spotting to the verso, and a touch of fading to the yellow on the spine, fine and sharp. A lovely copy. Uncommon signed.

Signed by Angela Carter in blue ink to the front free endpaper. Carter's first collection of short fiction (the author requested that the subtitle, 'Nine Profane Pieces', be removed from the 1987 Chatto and Windus reprint). The stories were written between 1970 and 1973, for most of which time Carter was living in Japan (which is reflected in the stories). In the Afterword, she explains that she "started to write short pieces when [...] living in a room too small to write a novel in. So the size of my room modified what I did inside it [...]." The book was reviewed in 'The Observer' by the late Lorna Sage (who became a champion and later friend of the author): "Miss Carter [...] evades most of the lumpish entailments of realism; she writes in exotic and violent metaphors, her shameless plots breed carnivorous water-lilies and androgynous wizards at every twist and turn. [She is] one of the most rousing young writers around" ('The Observer', 18th August 1974).