ISHERWOOD, Christopher (1904-1986). All the Conspirators. London: Jonathan Cape, 1928.

First edition of the author’s notoriously scarce first published work. Released when Isherwood was only twenty-four, All The Conspirators’ main character Philip Lindsay, the privileged, self-sabotaging anti-hero, was in part a quasi-self-portrait of Isherwood’s own character during his early years. Cyril Connolly wrote in his introduction to the 1939 edition that ‘this first novel is a key to Isherwood, and the Twenties. It introduces a dominant theme of his work, the Evil Mother, fierce, obstinate, tearful, and conventional, who destroys her son in All the Conspirators as ingeniously as in The Memorial and The Ascent of F6’.

Octavo. Original sand cloth boards, titles to spine in blue, publisher’s device blind-stamped to lower cover (slightly cocked, extremities lightly rubbed, ends of spine with some soiling); original dust-jacket (somewhat tanned, edges with some light wear). Provenance: Hubert C. Burrows (ownership inscription to front free endpaper reading ‘Hubert C. Burrows, Jr Washington November 1942’).