POWELL, Anthony.

£6,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Dance to the Music of Time. First editions, inscribed by the author in two volumes. Powell has signed the front free endpaper of The Kindly Ones, "Inscribed for Miss Jane Cox, March 1973", also signing the title page. Valley of Bones is similarly inscribed to one Maureen Money and includes a postcard by Powell to her loosely inserted.The complete series of Powell's celebrated novel sequence was likened by Evelyn Waugh to "a continuous frieze in high relief, deep cut and detailed" (p. 548). Covering more than 50 years in the life of Nicholas Jenkins, "the novel is less about Jenkins than about the world he belongs to, in which the more raffish elements of the establishment commingle with the upper echelons of bohemia, the usual catalysts being their wives, mistresses, and lovers. Observing how these incoherent bodies interact, and the bizarre unions that result, Jenkins discerns a pattern dictated by the rhythm of life - hence the theme of the novel, which is that its characters, like the Seasons in Poussin's painting, are engaged in a ritual dance to the music of time" (ODNB).

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