£95
FIRST EDITION, LEFT BOOK CLUB ISSUE, 8vo, pp. xxiv, 264. 16 double-sided plates included within pagination. Original limp orange cloth lettered in black. Some foxing. Cloth soiled, front cover creased, corners bumped. Date due slip of the P.M. Dott Memorial Library and ownership inscription of Dr. E.F. Dott to flyleaf.
The first edition of Orwell's landmark text, which was issued in both trade (hardback) form and this Left Book Club version. Gollancz had wanted to cut the second half of the book for this version, since that essay contained more critical attitudes towards socialism, but Orwell refused and so instead Gollancz contributes a foreword, not present in the trade issue, to distance himself from the text's conclusions.
This copy is from the collection of Dr Eric Dott (1898-1999), founder of the memorial library to his own father P[eter M[cOmish] Dott, into which this book was accessioned. It must have been part of the library's first collection, as it was founded in December 1937, and the first due date on the slip is in January 1938. It closed in the early 1960s and most of the books were dispersed, although a tranche of a hundred or so volumes from the library was discovered in the archives of the Workers' Educational Association Scotland, now housed at Glasgow Caledonian University.
