The Raj Quartet. [The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils; Staying On].

SCOTT, Paul.

Item Number: 127028

London: Heinemann, 1966-1975.

Complete first edition set of “one of the most important landmarks of post-war fiction” (The Times). Octavo, five volumes, original cloth. The Jewel in the Crown is an association copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the month of publication, “To Irene & Ignace, with fond love & many happy recollections of your kindness to me & my family ~ Paul London July 18 1966 [First English publication of this novel, so beautifully presented & published by your son-in-law, my old friend Roland].” The Jewel of the Crown is additionally signed by the author on the title page. The recipient, Ignace Legrand was a French author and anglophile. His son-in-law Roland Gant, publisher and writer, helped publish Scott’s quartet and was the dedicatee of Staying On. With a first edition of Staying On, which won the Booker Prize and features several characters from the quartet. Each volume is near fine in a near fine dust jacket. A Division of the Spoils has a price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket designs by Larry Learmonth and Tom Simmonds. 

"Of those writers who have attempted to distill the last years of the British in India in fictional form, the most ambitious and the most successful is undoubtedly Mr. Paul Scott. One cannot read Paul Scott's quartet of novels without being moved; and what is the sense of studying history if it is not to move on and to widen one's moral sensibilities? His achievement is on any count a major one" (Max Beloff). “The Quartet’s form, tells us, in effect, that the history of the end of the Raj was largely composed of the doings of the officer class and its wife. Indians get walk-ons, but remain, for the most part, bit-players in their own history" (Salman Rushdie).