Title: Seducers in Ecuador.
Publisher: The Hogarth Press, London.
Publication Date: 1924
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
76 printed pages [1-6], 7-73, [74-76]. The red-stained top edge retaining strong, unfaded colour. One or two very minor spots on the leading edge. The contents remain bright with no previous ownership marks and no further spotting. Slightly different toning to the endpapers corresponds to the dust jacket flaps, & confirms what the near fine binding already testifies, that this copy has spent life jacketed. 11 x 17.5 cm. Original red and black mottled cloth covered boards, with cream paper title label on the spine, printed in red. features a beautifully bright, square, and tight binding, with sharp corners, paper spine label fully intact, and barely a hint of wear to the spine ends. Complete with cream dust-jacket printed in red (spine slightly faded and a very little worn at the top, a couple of very minor spots, and with very slight wear at corners). First published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf on 30 October 1924 at 4s 6d in 1,500 copies. By 31 January 1925, Leonard sent Vita's mother the 1,000th copy to be sold. Virginia had met Vita for the first time on 14 December 1922 and this book is dedicated to her. The New York Evening Post gave the book the top review (by Joseph Collins), illustrated with a portrait of Vita. Virginia's "Mrs. Dalloway was reviewed in the same issue but less prominently. Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) was a poet, novelist, associate of the Bloomsbury Group, lover to Virginia Woolf, and the inspiration for Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando. "Seducers was a curious little story" , recalled Leonard Woolf as he reflected in his later autobiography on the first of Vita Sackville-West's books published by the Hogarth Press and marking the beginning of their 17 year exclusive publishing relationship & also coinciding with the start of Sackville-West's relationship with Virginia Woolf. "We made a very pretty book out of it and published it at 4s. 6d. just before Christmas ", he noted, but added that "[w]hen we sold out the edition of 1,500 copies we did not reprint ". Its plot turns on the idea that our perception of the world has a profound influence on the decisions we make. By wearing glasses with different coloured lenses, the protagonist, Arthur Lomax, not only determines his way of seeing but also of acting upon what he sees. On reading Vita's Seducers in Ecuador, Woolf was full of admiration for its texture and its "beauty in itself when nothing is happening nevertheless such interesting things do happen, so suddenly barely too". She noted to Vita in an exuberant letter: "I like the story very very much in fact, I began reading it after you left, . . . went out for a walk, thinking of it all the time, and came back and finished it, being full of a particular kind of interest which I daresay has something to do with its being the sort of thing I should like to write myself". It encouraged a burst of creativity in Virginia herself: "I felt rather spirited by your story, and wrote a lot -300 words- perhaps, this morning". Vita Sackville-West's 1924 novel Seducers in Ecuador is seldom seen thus, in near fine condition and still bearing the original dust jacket in very good condition. CROSS & RAVENSCROFT-HULME A12. Seller Inventory # 5066