Ambition: The £500 German Prize Novel.
London: William Heinemann, 1931. First UK edition. Hardcover. [4], 323pp. Lacks front free endpaper. Half-title is foxed, and bears a faint 1931 pencil gift inscription as well as a later neat ink ownership name. While the prelims are foxed, the text pages are notably clean, although towards the end of the book there is some foxing to the closed edges, which does not encroach onto the margins. In the original binding of straw-coloured cloth with a pronounced texture, spine decorated with a red tree and titled in black, in extremely fresh condition, bright and sharp. The protected unclipped pictorial dust jacket is bright and clean to the red front and white spine, rather foxed to the lower (advertisement) panel and the inner flaps. An exceptional copy. ['This novel unfolds the broad and brilliant panorama of the Great Elector of Prussia, of the Roi Soleil of France, and of William of Orange. Ambition, though on different planes, is the driving force in each group of characters, from the hunch-backed heir of the Great Elector on one side, to the two tragic lovers upon the other. Here are the wars and the statecraft, the controversies and the rebellions that lie at the foundation of the modern world. The kings, diplomats, courtiers, serfs, parsons, scholars and moods of the seventeenth century are called up in the imagination with an absorbing reality.']. VG contents, binding Fine, / very good+. Item #19313040
Price: £32.00