One Fat Englishman

First edition. 8vo. 192pp. Red cloth boards lettered in gilt to spine, in the yellow "Gollancz" dustwrapper [priced 18/- to front flap].

Inscribed by Amis to dustjacket front flap. Light spotting to top and fore-edges, slight rubbing to spine dustwrapper edges, else fine.

Author's fifth novel, dedicated to his second wife, novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, whom he met on a panel on Sex in Literature. A devastating satire on Anglo-American relations, centring on the ribald misadventures of a skirt-chasing British publisher on the loose in 1960s America. Inspired by Amis's sabbatical as a Visiting Fellow at Princeton in the late 1950s when "I was boozing and f****** harder than at anytime", as he wrote to his friend Philip Larkin upon his return.

His priapic adventures/shenanigans continued back home when he began a passionate affair with his [eventual] second wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard, prompting his then wife, Hilary Ann Bardwell, to write on his exposed back in lipstick, after he fell asleep on a Mediterranean beach: 1 FAT ENGLISHMAN – I F*** ANYTHING. "The leading British comic novelist of his generation . . . his aim was deadly accurate." –The Times