Description

“A SPONTANEOUS, RESOURCEFUL NEW BEAUTY” ALL INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY LAWRENCE DURRELL, EXCEPTIONAL SET OF ALL FIRST EDITIONS OF THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET

DURRELL, Lawrence. The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea. London: Faber and Faber, (1957-60). Octavo, original red, blue, yellow, and orange cloth, original dust jackets.

First editions of all four novels in the Alexandria Quartet, each inscribed and signed by Durrell, with Justine “Inscribed for Roslyn Targ for her birthday, Lawrence Durrell,” Balthazar twice signed by  Durrell on the title page and dated by him, Mountolive signed by him on the title page, and Clea signed and dated by him on the title page, in scarce original dust jackets.

Durrell’s landmark tetralogy, a piercing view of love in Alexandrian society in the years before WWII, shimmers as if capturing “the landscape of a dream.” The first of his four novels Justine “demands comparison with the best books of our century.” Balthazar continues Durrell’s epic series with “a spontaneous, resourceful new beauty” and, in the third novel Mountolive, Durrell again creates a “work of splendid craft and troubling veracity.” The tetralogy’s final novel Clea completes Durrell’s stated design of modeling “the series on ‘the relativity proposition’ in physics”—altogether achieving “a spontaneous, resourceful new beauty” (New York Times). As Durrell also noted, his novels’ greater purpose was an investigation into the nature of fiction itself, centered in “an investigation of modern love” (Parker & Kermode, 370). “We cannot see the whole of any given character or event in one novel alone. Each novel is meaningless on its own” (Burgess, 99 Novels, 67). Roslyn Targ is likely the well-known literary agent and wife of famous publisher William Targ.

Books fine; tiny bit of expert repair to verso of one dust jacket, lightest edge-wear to bright near-fine dust jackets. An extraordinary set, rarely found inscribed and signed in all four volumes.