SUNFLOWER.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated,colour artwork ('Portrait de Madame Nash' by Kees Van Dongen) illustrated front panel of dw/dj,with white lettering,and author's contemporary b/w portrait photographic illustrated rear panel; with negligible shelf-wear or creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top+fore-edges though aged/toned, still clean and foxing-free; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - near pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners, appears unread - apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered - front lower corner excepted - a minimal bump,publisher's original plain black cloth boards with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/backstrip and clean plain white endpapers - another bookseller's b/w adhesive label to foot of front pastedown.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn, 1-276pp [paginated] includes Pts I-IV and an afterword; plus [unpaginated] 2pp blanks,half-title page,publisher list of author's other works/titles,title page,a dedication,and 2pp blanks at the rear.
Suppressed by the author during her lifetime because of it's personal nature and now published for the first time,'Sunflower' is Rebecca West's astonishing fictionalised account of her obsessive love for Lord Beaverbrook and of the disintegration of her relationship with H. G. Wells. Although it was never finished,the novel,planned and written in the 1920s,makes a remarkably coherent whole,its strong prose and vivid characterisation often showing West at her finest.Sunflower is a thirty-year-old actress,rich,famous,one of the great beauties of her day,and mistress to the ageing Lord Essington.She has the world at her feet, except that society shuns her as it shuns all women who have transgressed its codes,and her relationship with the moody,tyrannical Lord Essington is destructive of her self esteem.'Like a rat in a trap',she is caught between losing his protection and facing the humiliation of public exposure - until she meets the millionaire politician Francis Pitt, vulgar,ugly,powerful,and utterly captivating.Sunflower's fascination turns into obsession and,oblivious to his faults,she pins all her hopes on this new relationship.Essington's love for her died long ago; Pitt's has yet to be conquered.'Sunflower' is an intriguing novel whose imaginative power belies its status as a uniquely personal document.This is given clarification by Rebecca Wests's biographer Victoria Glendinning in her Afterword,a fascinating account of a little-known period of West's life which places 'Sunflower' in its literary and personal context. Rebecca West was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield in London in 1892.She began to appear in print as a journalist and political writer in London as early as 1911 and was soon deeply involved in the causes of feminism and social reform.She was created Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1959 and died in March 1983.Victoria Glendinning,who has contribute the afterword to 'Sunflower',has written biographies of Edith Sitwell,Elizabeth Bowen,Vita Sackville-West and is the official biographer of Rebecca West. Since April 2013,again in March 2015,and in this year too,the UK Post Office has altered it's Pricing in Proportion template,altering it's prices, weight allowances,dimensions and lowered it's qualifying compensation rates too!
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