Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

An autobiography.

Item Description

8vo. 8 x 5.5 inches. 184 pp. Bound in original maroon cloth, gilt, in pictorial dust wrapper with slight edge wear at head of spine; otherwise a very good clean copy. 1974 gift inscription from author on title page. Signed copy of the autobiography of Herbert Van Thal (1904-83), London bookseller and publisher, editor and anthologist, from the 1920s. It includes accounts of his private life and a brief excursion into the film world; also many entertaining reminiscences of the publishers and authors he encountered, including Rebecca West. One chapter gives a good account of the new puritanism of the mid-fifties when the Home Office began a witch hunt of publishers for alleged obscenity, Van Thal standing trial himself before being found not guilty.