DARK LADY

First paperback edition. Signed by the author. Inscribed presentation copy. Publisher's pictorial card covers. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, with a little rubbing to the corners. The contents, toned to the paper-stock, are otherwise clean throughout and without previous owners' marks.

Inscribed by the author in blue ink on the front endpaper "For Frank, / in friendship, and with every / good wish - / Michael, / February, 1999". Michael Baldwin (1930-2014) award winning novelist, poet, broadcaster, writing tutor and founder and chair of the Arvon Foundation. 'Dark Lady' was his twelfth and final novel. The recipient is Frank Pike, an editor at Faber, who over four decades, from the 1960s, onwards was responsible for the Faber drama list, recruiting Tom Stoppard, Simon Gray, Brian Friel, Sam Shepard, and Alan Bennett, among others, as well as working closely with authors already publishing with the firm, notably Samuel Beckett.