fleming's celebrated first book
FLEMING, Peter. Brazilian Adventure. London, Jonathan Cape, 1933.
8vo. Original ochre cloth, upper board lettered in light green and blocked with design in light green, lower board blocked with publisher's device in blind, spine lettered and decorated in light green, cream endpapers, top edges ochre, others trimmed; pp. 414, [2, blank]; publisher's advertisement slip tipped in after p. 414; half-tone frontispiece, 15 half-tone plates, 2 full-page maps and one illustration in the text; cloth a little marked and darkened, rear endpaper with repaired margianl flaw, a little ofsetting from endpapers to frontispiece and title-page (the two leaves with straightened dog-ears), a little mild sporadic spotting internally, still a good copy of an increasingly rare first printing of this classic.
First edition, first printing. 'In April 1932 Fleming answered an advertisement in the agony column of The Times, which led him to take part in a crack-brained and amateurish expedition to the hinterland of Brazil, ostensibly to look for Colonel P.H. Fawcett, a missing explorer. Fleming persuaded The Times to appoint him their unpaid special correspondent. This mixture of farce, excitement, discomfort, and danger achieved nothing except to provide him with the subject matter for his first book, Brazilian Adventure, published in August 1933. In it he blew sky-high the excessive reverence and solemnity with which travel books had hitherto been treated, mocking the dangers and himself with infectious humour. People could not believe that a story of true adventure could be so funny, and the book had immense success at home and in America' (ODNB). Brazilian Adventure was the first of Fleming's books, and (like his other early titles), was published and beautifully produced by Jonathan Cape.
#2114552