JOHNSON, B.S. Travelling People.

JOHNSON, B.S. Travelling People.First Edition of Johnson's debut novel JOHNSON, B. S. Travelling People. London: Constable. 1963. 8vo. Black cloth backed boards with title in gilt to spine; black, yellow and red pictorial dust jacket designed by John Holden; inscription to title page; pp. [8], 11 302 [2]; minimal offsetting from pastedown to free end paper; otherwise fine. Signed and inscribed first edition of B. S. Johnson's first novel. Winner of the 1963 Gregory Award, this

First Edition of Johnson's debut novel

JOHNSON, B.S. Travelling People. London: Constable. 1963.

8vo. Black cloth backed boards with title in gilt to spine; black, yellow and red pictorial dust jacket designed by John Holden; inscription to title page; pp. [8], 11-302 [2]; minimal offsetting from pastedown to free end paper; otherwise fine.

Signed and inscribed first edition of B.S. Johnson's first novel.

Winner of the 1963 Gregory Award, this signed first edition of B.S. Johnson’s first novel is inscribed to Julia Trevelyan Oman (a set designer who worked with ballet and opera and wife of Sir Roy Strong) and reads, ‘For Julia, with very best wishes’. It was that this time that John and Trevelyan Oman were collaborating on Street Children, a photobook about growing up in London.

Each chapter of this novel claims its own literary technique with one composed as a newspaper report and another as a first person narrative from the perspective of a character in the last few moments of his life - the page disturbingly stained black as he dies (an intellectual nod to Johnson's eighteenth century predecessor Laurence Stern, whose novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy also included marked black pages). In this way, ever innovative in his play with structure, Johnson also employed forms of ‘interludes’; a culmination of quotes from books of the past combined with snippets of authorial commentary.

In the preface to the Travelling People, the experimental novelist, poet and literary critic, writes, "I decided that one style for one novel was a convention I resented most strongly: it was perhaps comparable to eating a meal in which each course had been cooked in the same manner”.

SKU: 2120948