Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$368.11 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First Edition / First Print. Hardback copy in grey boards with gold gilt lettering to spine. Dustjacket in removable protective clear sleeve (price sticker of 10/6 to front dustjacket flap). 32pp. Signed and inscribed by author to piece of paper cut from autograph book, and pasted to title page 'All good luck, Kingsley Amis'. Not library copy, clean bright lettering to book spine, no previous owner inscriptions. Bottom corners to both dustjacket flaps clipped, wear and missing sections to dustjacket edges, with rubbing to lettering on spine. (22/3)
Seller: CURIO, Grimsby, N. E. Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Amis, Kingsley. BRIGHT NOVEMBER. The Fortune Press, London, 1947.
Price: US$800.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Presentation copy, inscribed and dated in the year of publication by Kingsley Amis to English crime writer Edmund Crispin (pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery, 1921-1978) on the front flyleaf. Amis and Crispin became friends while attending St. John's College, Oxford. The author's first book, a short collection of verse published by Reginald Ashley Caton's infamous Fortune Press. Octavo: 32 p. In the first issue black morocco-grain cloth with gilt titles. Minor scuff to the last page of the text, with a bit of mild rubbing to the corners and tips; otherwise very good.
Seller: johnson rare books & archives, ABAA, Covina, CA, U.S.A.
AMIS, Kingsley.. Bright November. Poems.. London: The Fortune Press, [1947], 1947.
Price: US$1259.31 + shipping
Description: First edition, first-issue binding, presentation copy inscribed in the month of publication "Best wishes from Kingsley Amis, November 1947" on the front free endpaper. Bright November was Amis's first published book. The publisher Reginald Ashley Caton (1897-1971) was an elusive one-man publisher who founded The Fortune Press, based at 12 Buckingham Palace Road, in 1924. He specialised in gay writing (several Fortune Press productions were burned after the 1934 obscenity trials), and in taking on new poets, whom he rarely paid but could afford to publish due to judicious stockpiling of paper stock during the war years. He published Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin, as well as Kingsley Amis, who delighted in the "Caton mystique" and wrote him into four of his novels as a barely disguised rogue. Octavo. Original black morocco-grain cloth, spine lettered in gilt, edges untrimmed. Rubbing to ends, corners, and somewhat along joints, slight partial sunning to the ink of Amis's inscription, a very good copy of this rather fragile publication.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Amis, Kingsley. Bright November. The Fortune Press, London, 1947.
Price: US$1937.41 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 32pp, original boards in DJ. DJ professionally restored to spine, top edge of front panel and folds. Slight rubbing to spine ends and corners of book, light browning to endpapers, otherwise quite bright and clean. Inscribed and signed by Amis to front endpaper, 'Best Wishes from Kingsley Amis November 1947' Size: 8vo
Seller: Temple Rare Books, Oxford, United Kingdom