THE WINTRY SEA

First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy. Original black cloth with gilt lettering to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by Charles Gorham. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean without inscriptions or stamps. Minor bumping to spine tips and corners; light spotting to the page block edges. In the bright dustwrapper, lightly spotted and soiled to the rear panel, with rubbing, creasing and a few nicks to edges. There is stain to the upper outer edge of the front flap, also visible to the outer corners (c. 0.5 cm) of the prelims. Not price-clipped (21s net to the front flap). A nice copy.

Inscribed in blue ink to the front free endpaper, "For Philip and Pat Orminson [?] / Rupert Croft-Crooke / July 14 1964". Croft-Cooke's idiosyncratic travel book records two journeys, the first "through the Mediterranean on a Yugoslav cargo boat during the coldest month of one of Europe's most icy winters for a century", the second "along the coastlines of some recent fiction, my choice being made for me by the booksellers in various ports on whose stocks of Penguins I relied." (from the jacket).