London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.. 1932.
Inscribed by the author to Dennis Wheatley.
Inscribed to Dennis Wheatley and with Wheatley's bookplate. First edition. 195x120mm. pp. 607 [1bl]. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Original dust jacket, lettered in black and with removable red band indicating "The Book Society's "first" recommendation for January". Some minor chipping to head of spine of dust jacket and some creasing and a closed tear to top edge and spine a little faded. Internally very good with slight foxing to fore-edges. Overall an excellent copy in the rare dust-jacket and the even rarer band.
Front pastedown has the demonic bookplate of Dennis Wheatley and the front free endpaper is inscribed "For Dennis Wheatley. This tale is a little humbler than most of his. with the admiration of Louis Golding. London. August 31. 1937".
Louis Golding (1895-1958) was always something of an outsider. Born into an Orthodox Jewish household in Manchester, he began writing at an early age. Often ill, he travelled widely in warm countries particularly in north Africa and the middle east and his writing from these worlds drew on his Jewish inheritance. Magnolia Street is his most celebrated work. Set in Manchester (which Golding calls "Doomington"), the novel describes the relationships between Jews and Gentiles. A contemporary review described it as "a magnificent achievement: copious, humorous, romantic, tragic, genial, ironical, angry, wise; alive with action in every part, and crammed with the rich stuff of humanity". Magnolia Street was enormously successful, translated into twenty-seven languages and banned by Hitler and Mussolini. This would have pleased him for he was an unrepentant and enthusiastic anti-fascist which perhaps led Orwell to include Golding as one his "Crypto-communists and fellow travellers". Although it is "the larger drama of the Jewish people" that forms the backdrop to most of Golding's writing other novels deal with themes of black magic and crime and he also wrote on boxing, food and James Joyce. He is due a revival.
