The Time Machine – An Invention
H. G. Wells
Wiiliam Heinemann Ltd, reprint 1963
The classic time travelling science fiction story by H. G. Wells was originally published in 1895 and has been in near constant print ever since. This copy, a 1963 printing, has a dustwrapper design by Donald Green. My understanding is this artwork was done for Heinemann’s 1959 printing and likely only used for a few further subsequent printings. Nevertheless, an uncommon dust jacket to find.
Donald Green did artwork utilising his distinctive style for several publishers in the late 1950s & early 1960s including John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (Heinemann, 1963), Graham Green Our Man in Havana (Heinemann, 1958), Malcolm Bradbury Eating People is Wrong (Secker and Warburg, 1959), Cecil Freeman Gregg The Obvious Solution (Methuen, 1958), C. S. Forester Mr Midshipman Hornblower (Michael Joseph, 1958), and Michael Bryan Murder in Majorca (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958).
Hardback. Publisher’s red cloth with title in silver to spine and front board. In a dustwrapper. pp [8], 144. Size: 7.5 x 5 inches approx. (190mm x 123mm).
Dustwrapper tanned and spotted to top and bottom edges, and especially to flaps, spine and folds; light wear and rubbing to spine ends and corner tips. Cloth dusty and discoloured to upper edge of boards, otherwise clean and bright. Light tanning/foxing to endpapers; foxing to edges of page-block with some encroachment onto margins but generally pages clean throughout.
Overall, light wear but otherwise a nice, clean copy – quite lovely.
