Buy this book on-line KING**, FRANCIS: : THE BRIGHTON BELLE and Other StoriesLONDON.LONGMANS,1968. ISBN No ISBN.
UK,8vo HB+protected dw/dj,1st edn.VG+/VG+.No owner inscrptn but pre-decimalisation,previous bookseller's green,crayon price (25/-) to top, right-hand corner of ffe,but no price-clip to dw/dj.Green and white pictorial artwork by Julian Allen illustrated upper wrap+spine/ backstrip and black lettering,literary reviews to rear wrap; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges.Though protected,the dw/dj has three closed nicks/tears - no loss - two to lower edge,to bottom,right-hand corner and to foot of spine/backstrip and one to front,top edge towards top right-hand corner.To the upper, front edge of dw/dj there is also some light, minimal,sporadic foxing/spotting.Top edge very lightly aged - as usual/normal - with some
minimal,sporadic foxing/spotting; fore-edge much brighter and cleaner,contents bright,tight and clean - no discolouration and no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners.Clean,unblemished, publisher's original,brown cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/ backstrip with near immaculate plain white
endpapers.Described honestly and fairly - reads worse than it actually looks or is! 8vo,1-224pp [paginated] includes 13 short stories; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,dedication (to Olivia Manning - see following,sequential, alpha-numerical book ID,rja2845/8) and contents list/table.
In the title story of this collection,
Francis King compares the female protagonist to one of the old first-class coaches on the Brighton Belle - 'once elegant but now dilapidated and ramshackle . . .its tarnished brass and cracked mirrors boldly stating the meretriciousness at which they had only hinted in their glory.' The famous train,however,stands as the symbol not only for this once beautiful but now broken-down and impoverished daughter of an earl,but for the whole pleasure-resort that gives these stories their setting.Behind the cracked Regency facades,magnificent bow-fronted drawing-rooms have been barbarously sliced into segments to make flats and bedsitters.Elderly residents of disdainful respectability find themselves brutally jostled off the pavements. Beyond the quiet squares,with their well-shaved lawns,run streets strident with the voices of Irish labourers,students and day-trippers.In mid-winter a teenage drug-addict makes her temporary home in one of the gaily-painted private beach-huts.Criminality rubs shoulders with conventionality,vice with old-fashioned rectitude,raffishness with wealth.
Skilfully evoking this beautiful,exciting,
town in all its aspects - bizarre,comic,
sinister,romantic,grand - King has produced a collection of stories at once economical, brilliantly shaped and consistently entertaining.
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