Gay Agony

London: Jonathan Cape,, 1930.

First Edition. Publisher's grey textured cloth with the excellent and unclipped dust-jacket, slightly chipped at top of the spine. Publisher's postcard loosely laid-in. Without old inscriptions of other interior markings. A near fine copy. The story of Micah, an engineer, who falls for the landlady of a country inn. Manhood set many of his stories in the countryside, and was at the time a popular short story writer who ranks alongside such writers as Graham Greene and Dylan Thomas. Highly regarded by H.E. Bates, he fell into obscurity after becoming disillusioned with the editiorial interference in his writing, and after 1935 never wrote again. He lived for the rest of his life in a converted railway carriage in Sussex, brewing his own cider.