The Acceptance World (First Edition)
POWELL, Anthony. The Acceptance World. London: William Heinemann, 1955.
Octavo. Original red publisher's cloth. Black spine label with gilt lettering. Clipped pictorial dust jacket. [x], 214 pp. First edition. Lilley A.11.
A Dance to the Music of Time is among the great sustained achievements of twentieth-century fiction in English: twelve novels published over twenty-four years, from A Question of Upbringing in 1951 to Hearing Secret Harmonies in 1975, collectively tracing the lives of a loose network of English men and women from the end of the First World War to the 1960s. The sequence takes its title and its governing metaphor from Nicolas Poussin's painting of the same name, in which the four seasons dance in a circle while Time plays the harp — the figures perpetually in motion, perpetually returning to the same positions. It was ranked 43rd on the Modern Library list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century and listed in both Time magazine's 100 best novels and the Daily Telegraph's list of the 20 best British and Irish novels of all time.
The Acceptance World is the third volume in the sequence. Nick Jenkins, its narrator, is now in his late twenties and beginning to establish himself in London literary life — working for a publisher, writing his own novel, moving through the social world with the characteristic mixture of engagement and detachment that makes him so reliable an observer. The "acceptance world" of the title is a financial term for the market in bills of exchange, in which a commitment is made to meet an obligation at a future date; Powell offers it as a metaphor for the human condition more broadly — the way we all live on promises, drawing on engagements not yet honoured. Set in the early 1930s, the novel observes its characters making and unmaking their lives against the background of a society whose old certainties are already dissolving. The novel was a Book Society Alternative Fiction Choice on publication, and reviews from Kingsley Amis and Julian Symons confirmed Powell's place among the major novelists of his generation. The early volumes of the sequence are notably harder to find in good condition than the later ones.
Very good in good dust jacket. Jacket price-clipped; some rubbing along edges and to inner faces; slight chipping at corners and spine head. Binding sound. Contents very good; some toning to endpapers and edges, otherwise clear and bright.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000144
Original: $107.00
-65%$107.00
$37.45
Description
POWELL, Anthony. The Acceptance World. London: William Heinemann, 1955.
Octavo. Original red publisher's cloth. Black spine label with gilt lettering. Clipped pictorial dust jacket. [x], 214 pp. First edition. Lilley A.11.
A Dance to the Music of Time is among the great sustained achievements of twentieth-century fiction in English: twelve novels published over twenty-four years, from A Question of Upbringing in 1951 to Hearing Secret Harmonies in 1975, collectively tracing the lives of a loose network of English men and women from the end of the First World War to the 1960s. The sequence takes its title and its governing metaphor from Nicolas Poussin's painting of the same name, in which the four seasons dance in a circle while Time plays the harp — the figures perpetually in motion, perpetually returning to the same positions. It was ranked 43rd on the Modern Library list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century and listed in both Time magazine's 100 best novels and the Daily Telegraph's list of the 20 best British and Irish novels of all time.
The Acceptance World is the third volume in the sequence. Nick Jenkins, its narrator, is now in his late twenties and beginning to establish himself in London literary life — working for a publisher, writing his own novel, moving through the social world with the characteristic mixture of engagement and detachment that makes him so reliable an observer. The "acceptance world" of the title is a financial term for the market in bills of exchange, in which a commitment is made to meet an obligation at a future date; Powell offers it as a metaphor for the human condition more broadly — the way we all live on promises, drawing on engagements not yet honoured. Set in the early 1930s, the novel observes its characters making and unmaking their lives against the background of a society whose old certainties are already dissolving. The novel was a Book Society Alternative Fiction Choice on publication, and reviews from Kingsley Amis and Julian Symons confirmed Powell's place among the major novelists of his generation. The early volumes of the sequence are notably harder to find in good condition than the later ones.
Very good in good dust jacket. Jacket price-clipped; some rubbing along edges and to inner faces; slight chipping at corners and spine head. Binding sound. Contents very good; some toning to endpapers and edges, otherwise clear and bright.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000144
