J O N K E R S R A R E B O O K S
VIVIEN GREENE’S COPY
67. Babbling April GREENE, Graham
Blackwell, 1925. First edition. Original grey paper covered boards lettered in blue, in a pale grey dustwrapper printed in black. Vivien Greene’s copy with her ownership inscription on the front endpaper. A fine copy in a very good dustwrapper with some tanning to the spine and a few small marks to the covers. [44662] £6,000
The author’s first book, published whilst the author was an undergraduate. 500 copies were printed of which only 302 copies were bound up. Vivien met Greene whilst she was working as a secre- tary at Blackwells (the publisher of this volume) and Greene was still at Oxford in 1925. Greene converted to Catholicism so that he could marry her in 1927. Their marriage lasted until the end of the 1940s, when it ef- fectively fell apart due to Greene’s constant infidelities, though the couple never divorced.
68. The Name Of Action GREENE, Graham
Heinemann, 1930. First edition. Original dark blue cloth lettered in gilt in yellow dust- wrapper printed in black and red. A fine copy with light foxing to the foreedge, in a near fine dustwrapper with a small chip to the head, but otherwise crisp and unusually bright. [44626] £6,000 The author’s second novel, which derives its title from a snatch of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, “With this regard their currents turn awry / And lose the name of action.” It was a critical flop, which rather depressed Greene, who would later refer to it in exaggeratedly demeaning terms, “of a badness beyond the power of criticism properly to evoke—the prose flat and stilted” and he repudiated both it and his following novel, Rumour at Nightfall. The first issue (with the original 7/6 price) is now uncommon, without being unobtainably rare, however the dustwrapper’s light colouring and thin stock mean it is very seldom encountered in bright and undamaged condition.
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