ONE OF ONLY 150 NUMBERED COPIES SIGNED BY RICHARD HUGHES

HUGHES, Richard. A High Wind in Jamaica. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929. Octavo, original half orange cloth, top edge gilt, uncut, original glassine. $1000.

Signed limited first English edition, number 139 of only 150 numbered copies signed by Richard Hughes (out of a total edition of 157 copies), in rare original glassine.

"A minor classic of 20th-century English literature" (Kuiper, 566). Hughes "made his reputation with A High Wind in Jamaica, a study of a group of children caught up in real-life piracy and kidnapping" (Carpenter & Prichard, 263). Hughes' "first sustained work… it proved a bestseller that was praised by both the most influential critics of the time and his fellow novelists. Outwardly a 'rattling good yarn' with a background of storms and tropical jungles, of Victorian children captured by ineffectual pirates, it was at once seen as a work of art of singular freshness and as an original contribution to child study" (DNB). "The novel which made his name is remarkable for its entirely (and, for the time, shockingly) unsentimental depiction of children" (Parker, 146). "Hughes thus turns notion of innocence on their head, the charming girl, Emily, being capable of a terrible murder" (Stringer, 322). Published earlier that same year in New York as The Innocent Voyage and the same year as the first English trade edition. Glassine numbered "139" in pencil.

Book very nearly fine, rare glassine dust jacket with a bit of creasing and chipping to spine ends. An exceptional signed copy. Rare.