THE MISERABLE CHILD AND HER FATHER IN THE DESERT

First edition, first printing. Original red paper-covered boards with silver titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm with a touch of rubbing at the spine tips, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents, with some spotting to the closed text-block edge, are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the lightly rubbed dustwrapper that is a little faded to the spine and spotted to the rear panel and flap edges. Not price-clipped (£2.25 on the front flap). Scarce.

A semi-autobiographical, surrealism-edged novel about a daydreaming girl who is sent to boarding school during WWII. The British writer Dinah Brooke wrote four novels in the early 70s before moving to India in 1975 to study with the philosopher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh or 'Osho', after which she never wrote another book. Her novels went out of print and she was largely forgotten until her work was 'rediscovered' by the editor Lucy Scholes through an essay in a second-hand Virago collection, leading to Brooke's 1973 novel 'Lord Jim at Home', a dark parody of upper-class life inspired by a real murder, being reissued by McNally Editions and Daunt Books in 2023 with an introduction by Ottessa Moshfegh, with her 1971 novel 'Love Life of a Cheltenham Lady' due to be reissued in late 2025 by McNally with an introduction by Emma Cline.