Henry Cecil PORTRAIT OF A JUDGE Signed First Edition
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Henry Cecil PORTRAIT OF A JUDGE Signed First Edition
First USA edition, first print hardback of PORTRAIT OF A JUDGE and Other Stories, by Henry Cecil and published by Harper & Row, New York, in 1967. Illustrated by Frederick E. Banbery. Inscribed on the front endpaper, and signed on the title page by Frederick E. Banbery.The book is in very good condition (black boards with bright red cloth spine with black lettering and front board illlustrated with embossed drawing, minor creasing to the spine edges) with only slight wear to the dust jacket which is price clipped (slight creasing to the edges, minor rubbing to the top corners). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions. There is slight foxing on the top page ends.
Henry Cecil was the pseudonym of Judge Henry Cecil Leon. He developed his writing skills while serving during the Second World War, telling stories to officers to keep their minds off alcohol while sailing on 'dry' ships. These were collected in his frist book Full Circle, published in 1948. Thereafter the law and official functions provided the main source for many of his stories and plays. His books are works of great comic genius with unpredictable twists of plot which highlight the often absurd contradictions of the legal system.
From the jacket blurb;
"Dame Edith Sitwell says: 'Mr Cecil is, invariably, a brilliant writer. His prose and his invention run as quickly as a hare. One never tires of reading him, and each time one rereads a novel or a short story of his, one discovers some fresh brilliance to admire.'
Collected here for the first are fifteen stories which are among Mr. Cecil's favorites. They are a sparkling, witty, sometimes infuriating even dismaying lot.
They include the story of Mr. Justice Pantin, eighty-four years old and badly crippled with gout, who was sitting all by himself in his small garden when a stranger appeared and told him, pleasantly enough, that he had come to kill him.
There is a story of the motorist and his wife and the cyclist ...
And the story of the detective who was trailing a much wanted criminal - and found the trail leading up a steep moonlit mountainside.
There is a story of a mock trial at the Old Bailey ....
And a story called "The Wife in The Train"...
Henry Cecil is an expert on the law (his novels, which include Brothers in Law, Settled Out of Court And According to the Evidence, have delighted readers on both sides of the ocean, including many members of the bar) and he is a remarkably funny man too.
His wit, his inventiveness and his superb storytelling skill are wonderfully displayed in this collection."
175 pages. Illustrated with line drawings.
ISBN: n/a
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Henry Cecil PORTRAIT OF A JUDGE Signed First Edition