Brighton Rock, The Man Within, The Power and the Glory Loser Takes All, The End of The Affair, May We Borrow Your Husband, Our Man in Havana, Quiet American

Graham Greene The Quiet American First Edition

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.[Graham Greene]

| Selected work by Graham Greene | Graham Greene biography |

Greene, Graham. The Man Within
Published: London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1929
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Black Cloth
Price: U.S.$750

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8vo., First Edition, original black cloth, a few light marks, gilt lettered spine, pp.354, small mark to dedication page and just a hint of spotting to free endpapers and title, a very good copy.

{Wobbe A2a}.

GREENE'S FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEL: The plot in this historical adventure about smugglers on the Sussex coast in the nineteenth century is extremely complex and confusing, but the novel enjoyed considerable popular success, leading Charles Evans at Heinemann's to offer Greene £650 a year for his next two books. Greene resigned his post at The Times to concentrate on writing, but his next two novels, The Name of Action and Rumour at Nightfall, were commercial failures.

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Greene, Graham. Brighton Rock
Published: William Heinemann Ltd London. 1938
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Full light blue morocco
Price: U.S.$675

8vo., First Edition, rebound in full light blue morocco tooled with a diamond pattern of gilt dots, small mark to upper cover, spine gilt tooled with raised bands, new marbled endpapers, pp. 361, pages slightly browned, a very good copy of Greene's highlight.

....He created, seedy, sometimes pathetic, often tenuous survivors in a hostile world. What was it that led him to write of those deeply divided creatures who never seemed to be rescued except on the wrong side of the grave? Their creation is a wonderful accomplishment, never likely to be matched in our time. His greatest novels are four in number - Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair, and with the leading characters of these novels, (Pinkie, the whisky priest, Major Scobie, and Bendrix). Greene created the most original characters of our day. (Norman Sherry).

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Greene, Graham. The Power and the Glory
Published: William Heinemann Ltd London. 1940
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Original yellow cloth
Price: U.S.$875

8vo., First Edition, original yellow cloth, slightly soiled, maroon lettered spine, binding rubbed and worn mainly to spine head & tail with minor fraying, pp. 280, browning mainly to endpapers & half title, a good copy.

" His greatest novel " (Norman Sherry). Greene's story of a hunted, driven, desperate priest in Mexico suffered from being published during the war, and had to wait ten years for success. " Because of his sufferings in Mexico ( the whisky priest's sufferings often parallel Greene's) he would never be entirely satisfied with the efforts his publisher made to sell The Power and the Glory.... the journey (in Mexico) took Greene to the end of his endurance.... these experiences entered into the making of The Power and the Glory. He longed for the novel to have its just reward, but feared it would drop into obscurity..." (Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene). The novels popularity in France led to it being denounced by two Catholic Bishops to Rome on two separate occasions, and in 1953 Greene was summoned by Cardinal Griffin to Westminster Cathedral, where the author was read a letter from the Holy Office demanding changes to the text.

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Greene, Graham. The Quiet American
Published: William Heinemann. 1955
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Hardback with Dust jacket.
Price: U.S.$325

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8vo., First Edition, original blue cloth with fade patches, dust jacket chipped at corners and edges plus a few light spots, spine slightly faded, but jacket not priced clipped, pp. 247, single small name on front free endpaper, a good copy.

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Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair.
Published: Heinemann, 1951
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Hardback with Dustjacket.
Price: U.S.$425

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True first edition, FIRST impression in dustwrapper. 8vo., pp.237, Original grey cloth gilt, dust wrapper a trifle worn & faded.The book has a small neat inscriptions on the front endpaper. The grey boards are fresh and clean. Internally the book is very good with some light browning to the page edges. All pages are in tact.

The dustwrapper is in good condition. There is browning to the spine of the wrapper. There are a couple of small chips as can be seen in the picture. The price of 10s.6d net is in tact. Overall a nice wrapper. The wrapper is a true 1st issue with its price in tact and is scarce.

About the Author.
Graham Greene (1904–1991) worked as a journalist and critic, and was later employed by the foreign office. His many books include The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock,The Third Man, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, and Travels with My Aunt. He is the subject of an acclaimed three-volume biography by Norman Sherry, who wrote" Both The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair owe their existence to a great love. His love for Catherine Walston, wife of Lord Walston, was surely as beautiful and stunning and compelling as any great love affair in literature (Heathcliff and Cathy in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, or in life (Eloise and Abelard, Keats and Fanny Brawne). Here is some notion of its power from a letter Greene wrote to Catherine:

I can't get you out of my heart. You've splintered inside it and surgeons are useless. They say one day I may die of the splinter, but it can't be removed.

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Greene, Graham. Loser Takes All.
William Heinemann Ltd. 1955. 8vo., First Edition, original blue cloth gilt, in a worn and faded dust wrapper, with large chips to edges, pp.140, a few spots mainly to fore-edge, a good copy. U.S.$325

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Greene's first attempt at a piece of sustained comic writing. "...I had just finished The Quiet American. The mood of escape was still there, but this time it took me no further than Monte Carlo, to live luxuriously for a few weeks in the Hotel de Paris... to work long hours at the casino tables... and to write what I hoped would prove an amusing, agreeably sentimental novella - something which neither my friends nor my enemies would expect. It was to be called Loser Takes All. A reputation is like a death mask. I wanted to smash the mask..." (Greene, Ways of Escape)

[Wobbe A34a]

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Greene, Graham. Our Man in Havana.
Published: Heinemann London 1958
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Hardback with Dust jacket.
Price: U.S.$220

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Click on the iamges to see larger pictures.

8vo., First Edition, original blue cloth gilt lettered spine, in a pictorial dust wrapper, small chips to corners and edges, pp. 273, a very good copy.

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8vo., First Edition, original olive green cloth, in its pictorial dust jacket, chipped & worn with a two inch tear to spine fold of jacket, pp. 188, apart from wear to jacket, a very good copy.

Greene, Graham. The Comedians
Published: The Bodley Head. London. 1966
Edition: First Edition.
Binding: Hardback with Dust jacket.
Price: U.S.$225

SOLD on 28th Dec 07

8vo., First Edition, original green cloth slightly faded, in a pictorial dust wrapper, slightly chipped and marked, pp.313, name and address dated 1966 on front free endpaper in ink, a very good copy.

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	Born:	October 2, 1904 Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England
	Died:	April 3, 1991 Vevey, Switzerland Age 87
	Occupation:	Author and English Literature
	Nationality:	English

Life and work-childhood

Greene was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the fourth of six children — his younger brother Hugh became the Director-General of the BBC, and older brother Raymond an eminent doctor and mountaineer. Their parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion née Raymond, were first cousins and members of a large and influential family that included the owners of the Greene King brewery, and various bankers and businessmen. Charles Greene was "second master" at Berkhamsted School, where the headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry (who was married to another cousin of Charles).

In 1910 Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster, and Graham attended the school as a pupil. Bullied and profoundly unhappy as a boarder, Greene made several attempts at suicide (some of them, Greene claimed, by playing Russian roulette — though Michael Shelden's biography of Greene discredits the truth of these incidents), and in 1921 at the age of 17 he underwent six months of psychoanalysis in London to deal with depression. After this he returned to the school as a day boy, living with his family. Schoolfriends included Claud Cockburn and Peter Quennell.

He went to Balliol College, Oxford, and his first work (a volume of poetry) was published in 1925, while he was an undergraduate, but it was not widely praised.

Early career

After graduation, Greene took up a career in journalism but he was very unsuccessful, firstly in Nottingham (a city which recurs in his novels as an epitome of mean provincial life), and then as a subeditor on The Times. While in Nottingham he started a correspondence with Vivien Dayrell-Browning, a Roman Catholic (by conversion) who had written to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine. Greene converted to the faith in 1926 (he described it in A Sort of Life). He was baptised in February the same year, and the couple were married in 1927. They had two children, Lucy (born 1933) and Francis (born 1936; died 1987). In 1948 Greene left Vivien for Catherine Walston, but they remained married.

Novels and other works

Greene's first published novel was The Man Within in 1929, and its reception emboldened him to give up his job at The Times and work full-time as a novelist. However, the following two books were not successful (Greene disowned them in later life), and his first real success was Stamboul Train in 1932 — as with several of his books, this was also adapted as a film (Orient Express, 1934).

His income from novels was supplemented by freelance journalism, including book and film reviews for The Spectator, and co-editing the magazine Night and Day, which closed down in 1937 shortly after Greene's review of the film Wee Willie Winkie, starring a nine-year-old Shirley Temple, caused the magazine to lose a libel case. Greene's review claimed that Temple displayed "a certain adroit coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men", and is now seen as one of the first criticisms of the sexualisation of young children by the entertainment industry.

His fiction was originally divided into two genres: thrillers or mystery/suspense books, such as Our Man in Havana, that he himself cast as "entertainments" but which often included a notable philosophical edge, and literary works such as The Power and the Glory, on which his reputation was thought to be based.

As his career lengthened, however, Greene and his readers both found the "entertainments" to be of nearly as high a value as the literary efforts, and Greene's later efforts such as The Human Factor, The Comedians, Our Man in Havana and The Quiet American, combine these modes into works of remarkable insight and compression.

Greene also wrote many short stories and several plays, which were also, on the whole, well-received, although he was always first and foremost a novelist.

Greene's long, successful career and very large readership (for a serious literary novelist) led his fans to hope that he would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, although he was apparently seriously considered in 1974, he never received the prize. His broad popularity may have counted against him among the scholarly elite, while the centrality of religious themes in his work may have alienated some of the judges.