A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. Tome VI. La Prisonni�re (Sodome et Gomorrhe III) in two volumes

Paris: �ditions de la Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise/ Galllimard, 1925. Very Good. Eighteenth La Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise (NRF) edition. 8vos, pp. 280, [2]; 287, [3]. In French. Hand-bound gilt patterned paper boards, red morocco spine labels, gilt stamped lettering. Blue stain to top edges (faded), others untrimmed, a number crudely opened. Uneven sunning to spines and boards, gentle pushing to spine ends, toned. Mitchison's charming ex libris to front pastedown of vol. I, occasional ink offsetting to vol. II, else, clean and tidy. An attractive pair of hand-bound reprints of the sixth volume of Proust's masterpiece from the library of Naomi Mitchison. The "Haldane polymath", Lady (though she never used the title) Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999, CBE), was a prolific Scottish author and activist, with links to Fabian, Labour and Scottish Nationalist movements. Hailing from a family of privilege and pre-eminent scientists, she is best known for The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931), celebrated both as a key work in Scottish magical realism and as a significant contribution to twentieth century historical fiction; she wrote across genres and forms. Of her own "swan story", written in 1940 in Carradale dialect, 'Five Men and a Swan', and which she deemed her best work to date, her friend Neil Gunn wrote, "If I was in the hunt it's this swan rather than Proust's one that I'd like to keep my eye on" (Mitchison, 1979). Mitchison's stylish and stylised colour ex libris features a grand granite house; lacking the angle turrets and gables, it doesn't appear, however, to be Carradale House, which she bought with her husband in 1938, and where she resided for the rest of her life. Naomi Mitchison (1979) A Self-interview, Studies in Scottish Literature, 14:1.