Night flight and sunrise (signed presentation copy)

Melbourne and Adelaide : Reed and Harris, 1944. Octavo, original pink papered boards with printed title to spine, in Sidney Nolan illustrated dust jacket (lightly rubbed, small chip with loss to spine), pink endpapers, frontispiece portrait of the author, pp 40; a few toning spots, a fine, crisp copy.

With a signed presentation inscription by Geoffrey Dutton on the endpaper ‘For Greg, all good wishes, Geoff, Toronto 23/5/95 (Sidney Nolan’s first bookjacket)’. Dutton was close but not quite there with this claim, Nolan’s first illustrated book jacket was on Max Harris’s The vegetative eye (1943).

The first published volume of poetry by this important Australian writer, based largely on Dutton’s wartime experiences. Printed in an edition of only 300 copies, the book features a very early Nolan illustrated dust jacket. (COWLEY, Des, A checklist of Reed & Harris Publications, in The La Trobe Journal No 64, Spring 1999, p. 47).