NORTH FACE

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Inscribed presentation copy, from Mary Renault to her life partner Julie Mullard. Publisher's original yellow cloth with blue titles to the spine, in the supplied first printing dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping at the spine tips, the spine a touch faded and with some marking to the lower edge of the front spine fold. The contents are clean throughout. Complete with the rubbed and nicked dustwrapper that has several small chips and short closed tears to the upper edge, and a slightly faded spine. Not price-clipped ($3.00 to the upper front flap).

Inscribed by the author in blue ink on the front endpaper "To Julie again / with my love / Mary". An outstanding association copy. English novelist Eileen Mary Challans, writing under the pen name Mary Renault, is best known for her critically acclaimed historical novels set in ancient Greece. Her early fiction, however, consisted of contemporary romances populated by characters in complex relationships navigating difficult emotional and social circumstances. From the outset, Renault's positive and sympathetic portrayal of homosexual characters earned her an enthusiastic readership and lasting appreciation within the gay community. In 1933, Renault began training as a nurse at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary, where she met Julie Mullard, a fellow nurse with whom she formed a lifelong romantic partnership. After completing her training and while working as a nurse, Renault wrote her first novel. 'Purposes of Love' (Longmans, 1939), a heterosexual romance notable for its inclusion of an openly lesbian character, was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. It was followed by 'Kind Are Her Answers' the following year. Renault's third novel, 'The Friendly Young Ladies' (Longmans, 1943), appears to draw directly on her own life, featuring a lesbian writer and a nurse as its central characters. In 1948, after winning the short-lived but financially lucrative MGM Prize, Renault and Mullard emigrated to South Africa. There, they joined a community of expatriates who had fled Britain's repressive attitudes toward homosexuality in favour of the comparatively liberal atmosphere of Durban. Radical in their politics for the time and place, the couple were among the few white South Africans to participate in the anti-apartheid movement. It was in South Africa that Renault was able to write openly about homosexual relationships for the first time. 'The Charioteer' (1953), despite its classical-sounding title, offers a moving portrait of a young corporal's sexual bildungsroman in postwar Britain. The novel secured Renault's place in the gay literary canon for its rare, positive, and nuanced depiction of homosexual love. Unsurprisingly, it also provoked controversy, particularly in the United States, where her publisher, William Morrow, refused to release the book until a revised version appeared in 1959. Between 1956 and 1981, Renault turned to the historical fiction for which she is now best known. These novels, all set in ancient Greece, offered vivid imaginative reconstructions of figures such as Theseus, Socrates, Plato, and Alexander the Great. Though not a trained classicist, Renault was meticulous in her attention to historical detail. Prior to publishing her first historical novel, 'The Last of the Wine' (1956), she and Mullard travelled extensively in mainland Greece and the islands, including Crete, to study the architecture and landscape firsthand. The couple never returned to England. After a long and remarkably productive career, Mary Renault died of lung cancer in a nursing home in Cape Town on December 13, 1983. Julie Mullard, her lifelong partner and literary executor, died in 1996.