A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)

London: William Heinemann, 1951-1975.

Handsome collection of first editions

(Item #5085) A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.). Anthony Powell.

A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)

London: William Heinemann, 1951-1975. First editions. First impressions, of the complete series of the author’s celebrated novel sequence. 12 volumes, octavo. Original red cloth, spines lettered in gilt on black ground, publisher’s device in blind on rear covers. With dust jackets.

A complete set, including A Question of Upbringing; A Buyer’s Market; The Acceptance World; At Lady Molly’s; Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant; The Kindly Ones; The Valley of Bones; The Soldier’s Art; The Military Philosophers; Books Do Furnish a Room; Temporary Kings; Hearing Secret Harmonies. A Dance to the Music of Time is the work on which Powell’s reputation rests. The series, likened by Evelyn Waugh to “a continuous frieze in high relief, deep cut and detailed” (ODNB), covers more than 50 years in the life of Nicholas Jenkins. “The novel is less about Jenkins than about the world he belongs to, in which the more raffish elements of the establishment commingle with the upper echelons of bohemia, the usual catalysts being their wives, mistresses, and lovers. Observing how these incoherent bodies interact, and the bizarre unions that result, Jenkins discerns a pattern dictated by the rhythm of life - hence the theme of the novel, which is that its characters, like the Seasons in Poussin’s painting, are engaged in a ritual dance to the music of time” (ibid.)
Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. (Item #5085)

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A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)
A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)
A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)
A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)
A Dance to the Music of Time (Complete Set in 12 vols.)