Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works

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Earth Stopped: or Mr. Marx's Sporting Tour: Available Copies

Lovely copy of the second impression from July 1935 [1st was Oct. 1934]. Appears never to have been read. Very light page-edge foxing and slight sun darkening to dw spine else a choice copy, perfectly clean internally. The charming dw by Lane Foster has just trivial shelf wear at extremities else clean and bright. A very scarce book, particularly so in such excellent condition.

The First UK printing published by Collins, London in 1934. 8vo., red cloth lettered in gilt to spine; together in the first issue illustrated wrapper by Lane Foster correctly priced '7/6 net' to spine; THE BOOK is in Very Good+ condition with the boards slightly rubbed at the edges and corners; a little darkened to edges, with spine a touch sunned, and slightly pushed at the tips, lightly offset to end-paper with a previous owner's inscription to the front free endpaper; the Very Good+, seldom-found WRAPPER dulled along the backstrip with some age related marking to the folds and edges; chipped to spine and fold tips with the largest 1cm deep affecting letters 'E' and "A' of the title lettering; otherwise bright, unrestored and certainly scarce. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. A somewhat confusing book which is part pastoral, part hunting novel and part apocalyptic disaster, and a satire revolving around a fox hunt on the estate of a great Earl and the party which includes within it such characters as the Countess of Scamperdale and John Marx (a convinced Communist). The book was followed the following year by 'Gone to Ground', which follows the survivors of the earth-shattering event as they shelter underground, passing the time by telling tales of a sporting nature. In many ways a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the nature of communism, capitalism and the upper classes, the humour is incredibbly fast paced, moving from one joke to the next with such vivacity as to give the reader whiplash. Born in 1906 in British India, T. H. White studied at King's College, Cambridge, during which time he wrote his thesis on Mallory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur'. It was this experience, and reading the work for pleasure as opposed to in a school setting, which led him to write his famous 'Once and Future King', a modern retelling of the classic story and the work for which he is perhaps best known today. 'Earth Stopped' predates that publication, and was one of his first published books. The title is a pun on the hunting term 'Earth', which refers to a fox burrow, and the fact that these would have been filled-in or 'stopped' before a hunt. (Marcia) Lane Foster studied at the St John's Wood School of Art and then at the Royal Academy Schools before enrolling at the Central School of Arts and Crafts where she was taught printmaking by Noel Rooke. Her career career spanned portrait painting along with book illustration and the production of advertising material, predominantly in the medium of wood engraving. Extremely scarce in the first issue wrapper. Ashton Rare Books welcomes direct contact.