ALBERGA, Sydney. Second Flight: A Chronicle. London: Grayson & Grayson. 1936. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s block cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking dust jacket. This copy inscribed by the author to the front endpaper, ‘For Cyril Mason, in token of my gratitude for his invaluable secretarial services’, dated in the month of publication. A fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The contents clean and fine throughout barring a few light spots to the textblock top edge, light offsetting to endpapers, and a few light stains to gutter of half-title. The dust jacket unclipped (7/6 net) with a few small closed tears and tiny rubbing to extremities. An exceptionally well-preserved example.
A fascinating, prescient novel of one family’s seemingly everlasting struggle against tyranny—the titular ‘flights’ signifying first the escape from Soviet Russia to Berlin, and, with the rise of a new tyranny in Hitler and his henchmen, to France. Presumably somewhat autobiographical, the novel handles ‘the insidious influence of a maddened mass hero-worship on an entire nation’, unravelling a carefully constructed, menacingly oppressive replacement of Deutsche Kultur. Alberga published two other novels, but I can find very little information on him—an Alberga family from the West Indies, many of whose members emigrated and/or frequently relocated, might well be our Sydney’s. Scarce, OCLC locates only four copies.
ALBERGA, Sydney. Second Flight: A Chronicle. London: Grayson & Grayson. 1936. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s block cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking dust jacket. This copy inscribed by the author to the front endpaper, ‘For Cyril Mason, in token of my gratitude for his invaluable secretarial services’, dated in the month of publication. A fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The contents clean and fine throughout barring a few light spots to the textblock top edge, light offsetting to endpapers, and a few light stains to gutter of half-title. The dust jacket unclipped (7/6 net) with a few small closed tears and tiny rubbing to extremities. An exceptionally well-preserved example.
A fascinating, prescient novel of one family’s seemingly everlasting struggle against tyranny—the titular ‘flights’ signifying first the escape from Soviet Russia to Berlin, and, with the rise of a new tyranny in Hitler and his henchmen, to France. Presumably somewhat autobiographical, the novel handles ‘the insidious influence of a maddened mass hero-worship on an entire nation’, unravelling a carefully constructed, menacingly oppressive replacement of Deutsche Kultur. Alberga published two other novels, but I can find very little information on him—an Alberga family from the West Indies, many of whose members emigrated and/or frequently relocated, might well be our Sydney’s. Scarce, OCLC locates only four copies.
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