advocate of left-wing political views, he was one of the original “Hollywood Ten” who were jailed for contempt of Congress after refusing to answer questions about their alleged involvement with the Communist Party. The blacklist, which grew to over 150 names, persisted until the 1960s; Morton Grant was also subsequently blacklisted. It was effectively broken in 1960 when Trumbo was publicly credited as the screenwriter of Spartacus and Exodus . A film of Trumbo’s life, starring Bryan Cranston in the title role, was released in 2015. Trumbo went to great lengths to secure the publication of Eclipse . Morton Grant, who worked alongside Trumbo at Warner, assisted him; he sent out the manuscript with the observation that “the novel is a good, solid piece of work . . . I want to assure you that the author and his later work is a much more valuable piece of publishing property. I have seen the prospectus of his new novel, and it will eclipse Eclipse ” (Ceplair & Trumbo, p. 56). However, Trumbo struggled to find a publisher in America, and the book was eventually accepted in December 1934 by the small British publishers Lovat Dickson & Thompson. Trumbo drew on his time in the small town of Grand Junction, Colorado, basing the main characters on people he knew there. However, Trumbo apparently fell out of favour with the people of Grand Junction due to what they perceived as an overly negative depiction of their lifestyle. “Copies of the book were burned and tossed into the Colorado River. For years, the public library could not keep Eclipse on its shelves. If copies were checked out, they never returned” (Nijhuis). Eclipse was not reprinted until 2005, coinciding with what would have been Trumbo’s 100th birthday, after a renewal of interest. The Trumbo family donated the book’s copyright to the local library in Grand Junction and the library has since sold almost 2,000 copies of the title. Octavo. Original speckled white and blue cloth, titles to spine in blue, top edge blue. With the illustrated dust jacket. Spine dusty and lightly cocked, top edge faded, fore edge and endpapers tanned. An excellent copy in a well-preserved example of the jacket, spine a little toned, extremities rubbed and nicked, else bright and sharp. ¶ Larry Ceplair & Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical , 2015; Michelle Nijhuis, “The hometown that forgave Dalton Trumbo”, SFGATE , 5 March 2006. £4,250 [124192] 120 VILLIERS DE L’ISLE-ADAM, August, Comte de. L’Ève future. Paris: M. de Brunhoff, Éditeur, Ancienne Maison Monnier, de Brunhoff, et Cie., 1886 to the founder of the Académie Goncourt First edition, inscribed on the half-title “A Edmond de Goncourt. Hommage de son admirateur, Villiers de l’Isle Adam”. This is a superb association copy, with a distinguished provenance, of this very scarce and highly unusual symbolist science fiction novel, which popularised the word and concept of the “android”. The recipient was the man of letters, Edmond Huot de Goncourt (1822–1896), who founded the Académie Goncourt which still awards one of the most prestigious French literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt. L’Ève future is the first of two truly influential works by Villiers, a proudly penurious French aristocrat, the other being his Romantic play Axël (1890). Situated somewhere in the nexus between the classical myth of Pygmalion, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis , L’Ève future figures a caricature of the futurist inventor, Thomas Edison, who creates an ideal mechanical woman. Then a key text of the decadent
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movement, the work is still influential – the 2004 Studio Ghibli sequel to Ghost in the Shell opens by quoting the first line of the novel: “If our gods and hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well”. This copy comes from the library of the book collector and co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé (1930–2017), with his bookplate to the front pastedown. Octavo (185 × 115 mm). Near-contemporary red cloth signed Pierson, with original illustrated wrappers, desifgned by by François Gorguet, bound in, spine lettered in gilt, brown sheep spine label. Spine a touch sunned, light wear to spine label, corners a little rubbed, the binding otherwise sound and bright, faint peripheral toning to contents, as often, else internally clean and fresh; a superb copy. £9,500 [147107]
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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