Murdoch, Iris. An Unofficial Rose. First Edition.

Iris Murdoch

An Unofficial Rose

London: Chatto & Windus, 1962

First edition.

Octavo. Original cloth, in the publisher’s unclipped dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding clean and sharp, the contents bright and fresh. The very good dustwrapper shows light rubbing, minor toning a little wear to spine ends and previously repaired minor chips- see photographs. It remains attractive and substantially complete. Jacket now protected by removable archival  cover. Very light and scant spotting on page block. There has been some pencil writing previously erased.

Murdoch’s sixth novel, An Unofficial Rose is a densely worked study of romantic confusion, moral evasion, and emotional self-deception. Set among overlapping domestic and social entanglements, it displays the philosophical seriousness and comic cruelty that mark her strongest fiction of the period.

Published in the decade following Under the Net and The Bell, the novel belongs to Murdoch’s important early sequence, before the full consolidation of her reputation as one of the major British novelists of the post-war period.

A smart copy of an early Murdoch title, uncommon in this condition with the original unclipped dustwrapper, designed by T.Richie.