8vo. Half-title. Original green cloth, spine lettered in white (slight lean to spine, light toning near spine ends); dust jacket with Searchlight Books ad printed on verso and priced "6s" (chipping to spine ends and fore-corners, split along lower joint of spine panel, some toning, small spot of inpainting to upper panel above title). Provenance: "R.B.G" (initials penciled on front free endpaper); newspaper clippings tipped to endpapers.

FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL NOVELS OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegorical warning against totalitarianism under any political regime, and is considered "his masterpiece, the best fable in the language with Boxer the cart-horse, the pigs and the donkey becoming household words" (Connolly). In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell stated that Animal Farm "was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". Modern Movement 93; Fenwick A10a.