London: Secker & Warburg, 1980

8vo, pp. 244. Original green boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated dust jacket, author’s photographic portrait to rear flap. Top edge a little dusty, otherwise a fine copy in a fine dust jacket.

First edition, INSCRIBED BY LODGE TO HIS EDITOR DAVID BLACKWELL: ‘To John, with thanks and very best wishes, David April 1980’. The Whitbread Book of the Year.

John Blackwell [1937-1997] joined Secker and Warburg in the late 1960s, when the imprint was still an independent company run by Fredric Warburg himself. He was a constant presence through the company's innumerable corporate takeovers, mergers and changes of managing director. He was Lodge’s editor at Secker and Warburg, where much of his work was published. As well as Lodge, Blackwell was literary midwife to Secker luminaries J. M. Coetzee, Malcolm Bradbury, Michael Moorcock, Tom McGuane, Tom Sharpe and Louis de Bernieres, among many others.

A fine copy.