DON QUIXOTE DROWNED

First edition, first printing. Alan Ross' copy, with his ownership signature to the front endpaper. Publisher's original blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in the the Broom Lynne illustrated dustwrapper. A very good or better copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping at the spine tips, the cloth and gilt bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout. One page with a small production flaw to the fore-edge. Complete with the lightly rubbed, nicked and toned dustwrapper that has a tiny chip at the base of the spine. Not price-clipped (12s 6d net to the lower front flap).

Alan Ross's ownership inscription written in blue ink to the front free endpaper. The writer, editor and publisher Alan Ross corresponded with Hanley during the 1970s and 80s (the letters now held by the University of Leeds) and in 1997 provided an introduction to a Harvill Press reissue of Hanley's book of stories, 'The Last Voyage'. Something of a writer's writer, Hanley was admired and supported by, among others, E. M. Forster, T. E. Lawrence, George Orwell, Henry Green, and William Faulkner, who described him as "a chronicler of nomads and potential escapees, a writer who travelled the spaces of sea and consciousness".