CRONIN, Anthony. The Life of Riley. London: Secker and Warburg. 1964. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s dark blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket by Margaret Eastoe. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. Some light spots to the textblock edges, with a handful of light spots across the volume, minor. The dust jacket unclipped (18s net), complete, very gently bumped at extremities, very light marks to the white section of the jacket. A sharp copy.
‘“Middleclass men, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” And what are those chains? A job . . . which bores you stiff! A loving wife . . . whom you don’t love! The kiddies . . . the little beasts! So begins this deeply comic satire on the ‘whole horrid bourgeois life of the modern world’, from Anthony Cronin, the Irish poet and writer of the Flann O’Brien school. Indeed, Cronin was an associate of O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, and many other mostly Irish artists. The novel follows the habits and preoccupations of his fellow men in Dublin and London, and is the first of only two novels by Cronin.
CRONIN, Anthony. The Life of Riley. London: Secker and Warburg. 1964. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s dark blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket by Margaret Eastoe. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. Some light spots to the textblock edges, with a handful of light spots across the volume, minor. The dust jacket unclipped (18s net), complete, very gently bumped at extremities, very light marks to the white section of the jacket. A sharp copy.
‘“Middleclass men, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” And what are those chains? A job . . . which bores you stiff! A loving wife . . . whom you don’t love! The kiddies . . . the little beasts! So begins this deeply comic satire on the ‘whole horrid bourgeois life of the modern world’, from Anthony Cronin, the Irish poet and writer of the Flann O’Brien school. Indeed, Cronin was an associate of O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, and many other mostly Irish artists. The novel follows the habits and preoccupations of his fellow men in Dublin and London, and is the first of only two novels by Cronin.
