"IT SEEMED THE LEAST HE COULD DO—TO DENY HIMSELF THE DRAMATIC GESTURE, TO HUMILIATE HIMSELF"

LODGE, David. The Picturegoers. London: MacGibbon& Kee, 1960. Octavo, original black paper boards, original dust jacket. $600.

First edition of Lodge's first published novel.

The Picturegoers "nearly had David Lodge marked down as an angry young realist of the Sid Chaplin / Alan Sillitoe school… but in fact the urban backdrop is something of a decoy. While the novel's wider structures take in a collection of people who turn up each Saturday night at the Brickley Palladium, a seedy cinema in the seedier part of south-east London, its chief quarry is that very rare animal, the question of religious belief… Fans of Lodge's later novels will find much that is familiar here: the usual armfuls of parody, the literary allusions, the mildly sentimental ending… The Picturegoers' appeal derives as much from the quality of the writing as for its absorption in a bygone way of life" (The Independent). In variant black paper boards; the standard binding is red cloth.

Book fine, dust jacket with mild soiling to rear panel, slightest rubbing to spine ends, and a bit of toning to spine. A near-fine copy.