Room at the Top [with Uncorrected Proof]

London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957. First Edition. Fine-/Fine-. First Impression of Braine's first book, offered with the scarce uncorrected proof. Crown 8vo (189 x 122mm): 256pp. Publisher's green cloth, spine lettered in gold, in the striking dust jacket (price-clipped) illustrated by John Minton. An excellent example (spine ends very lightly bruised), tightly bound and clean throughout (apparently unread). Proof: Crown 8vo (190 x 125mm). Original deep tan wrappers, paper title label printed in black to upper cover, with handwritten publication date (March 14th) and notice that "names of people & places will be changed after publication" in blue ink. Soft creases to wrappers, else about Fine. Burgess 99, p. 66 (of "considerable historical interest," citing its "hypergamy [or bedding a woman from a class superior to one's own"]). On publication of this, his first novel, Braine was classed among the Angry Young Men, the mostly working- and middle-class British playwrights and novelists (including John Osborne and Kingsley Amis) who rose to prominence in the 1950s. Room at the Top, "although set in 1946, seemed to speak to the mood of Britain in the later 1950s, to a society throwing off deference and austerity and reaching out to new experiences. But in Room these new experiences were not primarily sexual or quasi-mystical, in the manner of the Beat Generation or the existentialists; Braine's protagonist, Joe Lampton, was no dropout; he unashamedly wanted in, into money and material possessions and social acceptance. In key respects, he was a harbinger of the Yuppies, the brash young upwardly mobile professionals of the 1980s, but living in a society more strongly marked by class divisions and deprivation and overshadowed by a residual puritanism that frowned on both overt materialism and open sexuality." (Literary Encyclopedia) The 1959 film adaptation was undertaken by Neil Paterson, with uncredited work by Mordecai Richler. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).