All the Conspirators.

London: Jonathan Cape,, 1928. His first book, inscribed to his first reviewer First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper in the month of publication, "To Katharine, with the author's affection and esteem. May 1928". The writer Katharine Tynan (1859-1931) spoke highly of the teenage Isherwood's poem "Mapperley Plains" in her review of the anthology Public School Verse, 1921-1922 (1923); Isherwood later re-expressed his gratitude in Exhumations (1966). Writing in the Bookman, Tynan commented on the anthology that "most of the young contributors are poetic-minded, and some of them will be more than that when their minds have matured. Not often does one find the natural magic, but it is in C. W. B. Isherwood's 'Mapperley Plains'... There is the authentic touch" (Nov. 1923, p. 122). "Mapperley Plains" was Isherwood's first piece published outside of a school magazine; receiving such a glowing first review from an established literary figure would have no doubt inspired him to keep pursuing his interest in writing, eventually leading to the publication of his first book, All the Conspirators. Looking back to Tynan's praise more than four decades later, Isherwood described himself in 1966 as "lastingly grateful [to] my first reviewer" (Exhumations, "Mapperley Plains"). Tynan was an Irish nationalist and prolific poet and novelist who George William Russell described as "the earliest singer in that awakening of our imagination which has been spoken of as the Irish Renaissance. I think she had as much natural sunlight in her as the movement ever attained" (Collected Poems, p. vii). Nearing the end of her life when she received this volume from Isherwood, Tynan published her complete poetical works in 1930 and died the following year. Isherwood's scarce debut book did not sell well and many copies were remaindered. It received more positive reviews in the decade that followed: Sir Hugh Walpole described it as one of the "unjustly neglected" novels of the 1920s (Sunday Times, 12 Nov. 1933), while Cyril Connolly wrote in his introduction to the 1939 edition that "this first novel is a key to Isherwood, and the Twenties. [It] introduces a dominant theme of his work, the Evil Mother, fierce, obstinate, tearful, and conventional, who destroys her son in All the Conspirators as ingeniously as in The Memorial and The Ascent of F6". Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in blue, publisher's device on rear cover in blind, bottom edge untrimmed. With supplied dust jacket. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Cloth irregularly faded, affecting a couple of letters on gently leaning spine, pale spotting on outer leaves, contents fresh: jacket slightly toned, head chipped with scuff flattened at lettering, smaller chips to fold ends, unclipped: a very good copy in like jacket. Christopher Isherwood, Exhumations: Stories, Articles and Verses, 1966; Katharine Tynan, Collected Poems, 1930.