MANNING, Olivia. The Balkan Trilogy: The Great Fortune; The Spoilt City; Friends and Heroes. London: Heinemann. 1962, 1964, 1965.
8vo. Three volumes. Original blue cloth lettered in blue (Vol. I) and gilt (II, III) to spines, in the dustwrappers designed by John Raynes (I, II) and Paul Castell (III); pp. [6], 296, [2]; [8], 319, [1]; [8], 363, [3]; Vol. I: tiny slit to cloth over spine, a touch faded and rubbed to spine tips, offsetting to endpapers; Vol. II: spotting to upper edge, just visible at the head of open pages, one or two spots to lower and fore-edges, toned to tips and edges, small mark (c. 4 x 3 mm) to cloth front panel, “R” (review?) stamped to upper corner of front free endpaper; Vol III: a touch rubbed to spine tips; wrappers rubbed, nicked, and with a couple of closed tears to extremities, toned, dusty, residue of one previous tape repair to verso of Vol III; II and III are neatly price-clipped, I retains the printed price to front flap; bindings remain square, pages clean, a very good set in good wrappers; uncommon.
First editions, first printings of Olivia Manning’s great Balkan Trilogy.
Well received on publication, Manning’s Balkan Trilogy has steadily grown in reputation. Issued a decade after Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour sequence, its quiet, exacting progress is in marked contrast to both Waugh’s trilogy and other more immediately celebrated accounts of the war.
At once a chronicle of war and a study of marriage, the trilogy follows Guy and Harriet Pringle, who arrive in Bucharest shortly after the German invasion of Poland. Guy takes up a university post, while Harriet, less socially assured and increasingly isolated, struggles to orient herself in an unfamiliar world. As Rachel Cusk observes in her introduction to the recent NYRB edition, the trilogy’s apparent breadth is deceptive: “Harriet’s impoverished heart is the unvarying leitmotif of its thousand-odd densely filled pages.”
The first two volumes are set against the backdrop of the disintegration of Romania and the German occupation of Bucharest; the third follows the Pringles as they flee to Athens. The events and settings closely reflect Manning’s own years in Romania, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine with her husband, R. D. “Reggie” Smith, yet, as Cusk notes, Manning’s autobiographical presence is secondary to her role as witness: “her eye and ear are a match for the large canvas of war.”
SKU: 2123729