A Dance to the Music of Time: A Question of Upbringing; A Buyer’s Market; The Acceptance World; At Lady Molly’s; Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant; The Kindly Ones; The Valley of Bones; The Soldier’s Art; The Military Philosophers; Books do Furnish a Room; Temporary Kings; Hearing Secret Harmonies.

POWELL, Anthony.

Item Number: 133670

London: William Heinemann, 1951-1973.

First editions of each volume in the author’s acclaimed Dance to the Music of Time series. Octavo, 12 volumes.  The Acceptance World volume is a presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Inez from Tony.” The recipient, Inez Holden was a British writer and Bohemian social figure and journalist, also known for her association with George Orwell. Each volume is near fine to fine in near fine dust jackets that only show light wear. Jacket design by James Broom-Lynne. An exceptional set, most rare in this condition and signed.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a twelve-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). Listed on Modern Library's 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century. Time magazine included the novel in its100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.