JOHNSON, Paul.
Left of Centre.
London: MacGibbon & Kee , 1959.
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First Edition of Paul Johnson's Left of Centre; Inscribed by Him to Publishing legend Martin Secker
First edition of the historian's first book. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Sylvia and Martin Secker with best wishes from an Aspiring Author Paul Johnson." The recipient, Martin Secker was London publisher who was responsible for producing the work of a distinguished group of literary authors, including D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Norman Douglas, Henry James, Compton Mackenzie, and George Orwell. He began publishing just before the First World War. Near fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Stephen Russ.
Left of Centre (1959) is the debut novel of Paul Johnson (1928–2023), the prolific British journalist, historian, and polemicist who would go on to produce more than fifty books over a career spanning seven decades — among them Modern Times, A History of Christianity, A History of the Jews, and Intellectuals, works that established him as one of the most widely read popular historians writing in the English language. Published early in Johnson's career when he was still firmly embedded in the left-wing intellectual culture of postwar Britain — writing for and eventually editing the New Statesman, associating with Aneurin Bevan, and operating squarely within the tradition of British socialist journalism — the novel is described in period sources as chronicling the meeting of a Complacent Young Man with an Angry Old City, a premise that reflects the characteristic preoccupations of the late-1950s British literary moment, when the tensions between class, ambition, and political disillusionment provided the animating energy of a generation of writers.
Left of Centre.
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