Stamboul Train - photo 1
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Stamboul Train

Sold
£ 6 300
Auction dateClassic
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1016432
Lot 66 | Stamboul Train
Stamboul Train

Graham Greene

GREENE, Graham (1904-1991). Stamboul Train. London: William Heinemann, 1932.



The Higgins copy of the first edition, first issue, advance copy in the exceptionally rare proof dust-jacket. Although The Name of the Action and Rumour at Nightfall had not been great successes, the fact that the Book Society had chosen Greene’s new work guaranteed a sale of 10,000 copies, and so the print run of Stamboul Train was set at 13,000. As the pencilled note in this copy states, it was to be published on 1st December 1932, but J.B. Priestley had seen an advance copy and threatened libel action over the character of Q.B. Savory, which he believed was an oblique reference to him. Consequently, all 13,000 copies had to be unstitched and cancels inserted to alter the offending text. Presumably the present copy was one of the advance copies as seen by Priestley as it has the uncancelled text (easily identified by the presence of ‘Dickens’ in l.2 on p.80, which was later changed to ‘Shakespeare’); this would also explain the dust-jacket being in what seems to a be proof state. We have only been able to trace one other copy with unaltered text, being a proof copy bound in red wrappers in the collection of Clinton Ives Smullyan Jr (sold Sotheby’s 16 December 1996, lot 24). See R. H. Miller, 'Textual Alterations in Graham Greene's Stamboul Train', The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Third Quarter, 1977, Vol. 71, No. 3, pp. 378-3861; Wobbe A5a (although he did not see such a copy as the present lot, he notes on p.17: ‘it is possible that a few copies without the alterations … may still exist’).



Octavo. (Inner hinge just starting to split between front free endpaper and text block, fore-edges lightly spotted, sometimes just extending into margins of leaves, heavier to pp.120-130). Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt and with mosque design, publisher’s logo stamped in blind on lower cover (faint marks to upper and lower covers); original Youngman Carter pictorial dust-jacket with spine, rear panel and flaps blank (rear panel with large piece missing and associated tears with tape repairs, one of these tears extending across spine, this latter browned and chipped at head, couple of other very tiny chips at heads of folds with associate tiny losses to pictorial front panel, spine lightly browned); contained in a green morocco-backed cloth case. Provenance: author’s bookplate loosely inserted – ?publisher’s pencilled note on front free endpaper ‘To Be published / December 1st / price 7/6 net’ – Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue 900 (1970) – House of Books Ltd – Eugene Higgins, New York City.

Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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28.09.2023 – 28.09.2023
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
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