BILLANY, Dan; DOWIE, David. The Cage. London: Longmans. 1949. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the scarce dust jacket. A very good copy. The boards clean and bright, the binding tight and very slightly rolled. The textblock gently spotted, with foxing to endpapers, else largely clean. From the library of Bruce Marshall with his ink inscription to front endpaper. The dust jacket unclipped (9/6 net) with chip to front panel bottom corner, several smaller chips and some closed tears. Gently rubbed along most edges, but uncommon enough.
An excellent example of ‘the only known account of a gay love affair to come out of WW2’. Billany signed up with the East Yorkshire Regiment one year into the Second World War, but was captured by the Nazis in North Africa in 1942, and transferred to Fontanellato POW camp in Italy. The title refers to the seventy yard square barbed wire-clad home of 150 men. It is here the pair met and endured a most terrible captivity, and so began Billany’s unrequited love for Dowie. Billany found solace in writing and used Italian school textbooks sewn together to create the manuscripts for various novels. More than a year in captivity, amid the Italian capitulation, the pair fled for the Italian countryside. They entrusted the manuscripts to rural farmers who, after the war, sent them to Billy’s parents in Britain. By which time, Billany and Dowie had disappeared over the Apennines, never to be seen again, their disappearance still a mystery. A deeply poignant, bold and thus highly unusual novel. The jacket design is a reproduction of the packing paper in which the manuscript was wrapped when it arrived in England. Uncommon.
BILLANY, Dan; DOWIE, David. The Cage. London: Longmans. 1949. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the scarce dust jacket. A very good copy. The boards clean and bright, the binding tight and very slightly rolled. The textblock gently spotted, with foxing to endpapers, else largely clean. From the library of Bruce Marshall with his ink inscription to front endpaper. The dust jacket unclipped (9/6 net) with chip to front panel bottom corner, several smaller chips and some closed tears. Gently rubbed along most edges, but uncommon enough.
An excellent example of ‘the only known account of a gay love affair to come out of WW2’. Billany signed up with the East Yorkshire Regiment one year into the Second World War, but was captured by the Nazis in North Africa in 1942, and transferred to Fontanellato POW camp in Italy. The title refers to the seventy yard square barbed wire-clad home of 150 men. It is here the pair met and endured a most terrible captivity, and so began Billany’s unrequited love for Dowie. Billany found solace in writing and used Italian school textbooks sewn together to create the manuscripts for various novels. More than a year in captivity, amid the Italian capitulation, the pair fled for the Italian countryside. They entrusted the manuscripts to rural farmers who, after the war, sent them to Billy’s parents in Britain. By which time, Billany and Dowie had disappeared over the Apennines, never to be seen again, their disappearance still a mystery. A deeply poignant, bold and thus highly unusual novel. The jacket design is a reproduction of the packing paper in which the manuscript was wrapped when it arrived in England. Uncommon.
