Basil Street Blues
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000. Hardcover. xiv, 306 p.: 16 unpaginated pages of illustrations; 24 cm. Burgundy cloth with gilt-stamped spine title; speckled beige paper over boards with blind-stamped author's initials on front cover. Color illustrated dust jacket. Stated First American Edition. "A biographer by profession, Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But old photograph albums, papers found in the lining of an evening bag, and crumbling documents in various public record offices gradually yield clues to a constellation of starting events and eccentric characters, a long, slow decline from English nobility on one side, and on the other a dramatic Scandinavian ancestry, that could have been imagined by Isak Dinesen. Fatal fires, suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, unconsummated longings, and the rumor of a fabulous Indian tea fortune . . . all these flow from the pages of his parents' recollections to which he adds his own. This is a memoir marked by humor, gentle irony, and a deeply sympathetic understanding of human failings" [from the dust jacket]. ISBN: 0-393-04850-0. Book is in Fine Condition. Dust Jacket is in Near Fine Condition: edges lightly rubbed. Fine / near fine. Item #001598
ISBN: 0393048500
Price: $10.95