The Powell Family Copies of A Dance to the Music of Time
POWELL, Anthony. A Dance to the Music of Time London: Heinemann. 1951–1975.
8vo. Twelve volumes, ten of them Powell family copies. Original red cloth, spines lettered in gilt to black lettering-pieces, in the original James Broom Lynne dust-jackets; a few scattered spots to text-block edges of At Lady Molly’s and The Kindly Ones; the ten family copies are uncommonly well-preserved and fresh, the Broom Lynne wrappers remarkably bright, the colours vivid, the volumes seemingly unread; occasional light edge-wear; with the Powell family bookplate to each pastedown, the remaining two titles, A Buyer’s Market and The Valley of Bones are supplied non-family copies of the first printings, both in wrappers, the former in the first state wrapper with wide inner flaps (the front neatly clipped) with some discreet repairs to spine ends and folds and a small date neatly stamped to the lower corner of the rear flap, previous owner’s name neatly in ink to front free endpaper, light spotting to fore-edges; The Valley of Bones, a near-fine copy, in like, unclipped wrapper, just a touch rubbed to spine tips and corners.
Anthony Powell’s own, and family, copies of ten of the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time, all first printings, with first printings of the two remaining volumes supplied; the author’s masterpiece and one of the monuments of twentieth-century fiction in English; four volumes are inscribed by the author: two to his younger son John, and two – the first, A Question of Upbringing dated on the day of publication – almost certainly for his wife Violet. All ten bear Powell’s Ex Libris plate to front pastedowns; condition is immaculate, the wonderful Broom Lynne jackets vibrant and fresh.
A Question of Upbringing (1951), inscribed in pencil to the front free endpaper ‘|With love / from Tony / 22 Jan 1951|’. Published 22 January 1951 in an edition of 7,500 copies. Powell later explained in his Memoirs (III, p. 215) that ‘it was my intention that an additional half-title, indicating the name of the whole sequence, The Music of Time (followed by asterisks denoting the number of the volume), should appear on the page preceding that opening the narrative. After I had passed proofs some over-enthusiastic supervisor altered this subheading to A Question of Upbringing, already used on the first page as half-title. This was soon put right, so that a “first state’ exists in the first edition.” This copy is of that first state, ‘1st state with incorrect half-title before p. 1’ pencilled (in Powell’s hand?) at the head of the front free endpaper.
At Lady Molly’s (1957), inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘with love | from | Tony’; additionally signed ‘Anthony Powell’ to the title page beneath the struck-out printed name.
The Soldier’s Art(1966), inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘John | with love | D’; additionally signed ‘Anthony Powell’ to the title page above the struck-out printed name.
Temporary Kings (1973), inscribed in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘John | from D | with love’; additionally signed ‘Anthony Powell’ to the title page above the struck-out printed name.
A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975, holds a special place in British fiction of the twentieth century. Comparisons with Proust’s great novel also spanning twelve volumes (and which Powell admired), are inevitable, and both authors achieve effects that exploit the possibilities of breadth and depth opened up by the capaciousness of the form.
The work unfolds across more than half a century, from 1914 to 1971, each volume at once self-contained and part of the larger design. The scale of the canvas allows for the subtly traced, slowly evolving examination of the inner and outer life of its narrator Nicholas Jenkins, as well as the manners and mores of twentieth-century England, or at least those facets of political, cultural and military life that Powell knew best (it is inevitably, if guardedly, a semi-autobiographical work). Watching a milieu in which ‘the more raffish elements of the establishment commingle with the upper echelons of bohemia’, Jenkins discerns ‘a pattern dictated by the rhythm of life’ (ODNB), like the seasons in the Poussin painting from which Powell took his title, described by Jenkins at the opening of the first volume. The unfolding sequence invites visual parallels: Powell’s biographer Hilary Spurling likening it to ‘a Chinese scroll painting, a vast canvas streaked with violence and perturbation, suffused with humour, at once passionate and dispassionate, lyrical and absurd, almost disintegrating at points into gloom and chaos, rising at others to fierce, complex, brilliantly coloured climaxes.’
Anthony Powell met Violet Powell (née Pakenham), daughter of the fifth Earl of Longford, in 1934, through the London literary and social circles they both frequented. Their marriage lasted more than sixty years. ‘I had never asked another woman to marry me’, Powell later remarked, ‘and […] have never wished to be married to another woman’ (The Times~i~, 16 January 2002). Violet was herself an active literary figure, publishing criticism, journalism, and books including studies of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and E. M. Delafield, as well as three volumes of autobiography. Powell acknowledged her as one of the most important first readers of his work. She survived him by a year, dying in 2001.
John Powell (b. 1940), is the younger son of Anthony and Violet. Compared with his elder brother Tristram, he has always maintained a relatively private public profile. After his parents’ deaths, John was involved in matters relating to the family library and literary estate.
Lilley A.8(a) / 11(a) / 12(a) / 13(a) / 14(a) / 17(a) / 18(a) / 19(a) / 21(a) / 22(a).
SKU: 2124829