The Virgin in the Garden & Still Life

First edition thus. Large 8vo. Pp. [iv], 1004. Red cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Jacket illustration features a detail of Samuel Palmer's In a Shoreham Garden, courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Signed by Author to title page. Hint of toning to textblock edges, else Fine.

The Virgin in the Garden was first published by Chatto & Windus in 1978; Still Life followed in 1985. The first two instalments – each complete in itself – of the Frederica quartet, which was expanded by Babel Tower (1996) and concluded by Whistling Woman (2002). They follow the fortunes of Alexander, Stephanie and Frederica through academia, business and family life. The author won the Booker Prize and the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize in 1990 for Possession.

"That rare thing, a highly wrought contemporary novel, generous in conception and ambitious in style, which affords an enormous and continuous pleasure." –Anita Brookner, Standard