The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw; Covering End

This, the earliest issue of the first edition is bound in blue cloth with the four iris designs to the upper board and the title page printed in black and red and the 32 page advertisements to the rear. The blue cloth is a rubbed and darkened with a lighter patch on the front board where a subscription library label has been removed; slight loss at the tail of the spine. Dixon’s Circulating Library label on the front pastedown; ownership inscription opposite of ‘E. Butcher 1/3/19 1 Gresham Rd, Cambridge’. Spotting to preliminaries; the text is browned near the margins but complete; one gathering has pulled away from the text block but the sewing is still holding it in place. The final leaf of adverts and the flyleaf at follows it are detached. Despite these faults the binding is sound and the text is complete as called for with the publisher's adverts beginning with Conrad’s novels. Collates correctly: [2] [3] pp 4-310 [2] [32] adverts.

The Turn of the Screw was an instant classic, praised by Oscar Wilde as 'a most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale, like an Elizabethan tragedy. I am greatly impressed by it'. It's popularity has never waned and since the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten there has been renewed interest in his operatic adaption. Edel and Laurence A52a.