THE HOTEL

First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered and ruled in violet to the upper board and spine, in the Donia Nachsen illustrated dustwrapper. A striking, very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth fresh, the contents bright and clean throughout, without inscriptions or stamps. The faintest spotting visible to the page block. Complete with the remarkably vibrant, sharp and clean original dustwrapper, without fading, tears, or even any nicks to speak of. Not price-clipped and correctly priced 7/6 net to the front flap. An uncommonly beautiful copy of the author's first novel. Vanishingly scarce in the dustwrapper.

'The Hotel', Bowen's first novel, was written during the two years she was living at 73 Knights Lane, Kingsthorpe, in Northampton where, newly-wed, she had moved with her husband Alan Cameron in 1923. Her two earlier books (both of short story collections), 'Encounters' (1923) and 'Ann Lee's and Other Stories' (1926) had been published by Sidgwick & Jackson, but for 'The Hotel' she moved to Constable. In her invaluable biography of Bowen, Victoria Glendinning quotes from a letter Rose Macaulay sent to Michael Sadleir at Constable in July, 1926: "I believe Curtis Brown [the agent Macaulay and Bowen shared] is sending you 'The Hotel', a novel by Elizabeth Bowen, who wrote two very clever books of short stories [...] This is only to say that I've just read 'The Hotel' and thought it extraordinarily clever and good!" Sadleir read it for himself and was equally impressed. The novel, set among a group of English guests staying in a hotel on the Italian Riviera (where Bowen herself had spent the winter of 1921), is clearly indebted to Forster's 'A Room With A View' and Woolf's 'The Voyage Out' (her own debut novel); Bowen's voice, however, is already distinct. Glendinning asserts that "[t]he important thing about 'The Hotel' is that it is very, very funny [, and] for a first novel it is extraordinary." The book was published on 18 August 1927. Owing to the destruction of the publisher's records during the war, no record survives of the number of copies printed. There is, however, evidence that a second impression was needed by October the same year. (Victoria Glendinning, Elizabeth Bowen: A Biography [London: 1977]; Sellery and Harris A3a.).