GODDEN, Rumer. Greengage Summer. London Macmillan & Co., Limited. 1958

8vo.; publisher’s emerald green cloth lettered gilt to spine in pictorial dustwrapper; pp. iv], 3-217b + [ii]; unillustrated; a bright, clean copy, both externally and internally, with slight fading to extreme spine ends and lower edge of boards; without ownership marks or inscriptions, crisp and fresh, in a remarkably and unusually nice, unclipped dustwrapper (13s 6d) with dusting, minor marking, and localised spotting, to lower panel, very slight fading to spine with a small (5mm x 4mm) hole to centre (see photograph), with corresponding small area of fading to cloth, this puncture has a small and expert paper repair to the reverse rendering it very unobtrusive; increasingly scarce.

First edition.  “Greengage Summer” is one of Godden’s most famous and beloved novels and is often cited as one of the most significant English coming-of-age novels of the twentieth century, alongside H.E. Bates’s “The Go-Between”, and Dodie Smith’s “I Capture the Castle”.

The story takes place in Eastern France one summer in the 1920s when a group of five siblings and their mother travel to a slightly run-down, but once grand, hotel called “Les Oeillets”, situated by the Marne river in the small town of Saint-Marc.  When the mother is hospitalised on arrival for several weeks the children fall under the care of the hotel proprietress Mademoiselle Zizi and her mysterious English lover, Eliot.

Godden’s prose is rich and evocative, and her descriptions of the languorous and aromatic French summer, intoxicating. Events are related by the adult sibling, Cecil, recalling events from her childhood experiences, which led to a growing adult awareness and loss of innocence, both romantic and sexual.