The Hours And The Centuries Peter De Mendelssohn

First UK edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 20.5 × 13.5cm, 304pp. From the dustwrapper, "There are deserted towns in France, small fortified places overhanging remote valleys, whose life ceased long ago and whose people went elsewhere to seek their livelihood. Peter de Mendelssohn has made a new legend in the spirit of the old legends surrounding one of these fortress towns cut off from the world when a river changed its course. Descendants of its original inhabitants returnt o settle there. They build a bridge over the river, and others come. No one is turned away. The little town comes to life again, the property of them all. But if it is now repopulated by the people of today, it has never really ceased to be populated by the generation of yesterday. Ghosts walk its streets and inhabit its crumbled houses. History lies heavily upon it, so that the present seems to be no more than an echo painted thinly over the canvas of the past. The new life, with all its hopes and loves, is caught up inevitably in the old story, in the past dreams of pursuit of happiness and the will to destruction. Finally, an ancient battle is re-fought, the pilgrims go back whence they came, and the town becomes deserted once again. The theme of the working of ghosts of the past upon the people of the present is one whose fascination never fades, and Peter de Mendelssohn here invests it with rare imagination and a singular and touching beauty." Condition: A good readable copy but the book has foxing to the page edges and a little to the endpapers. The dustwrapper is quite heavily chipped to the edges but it has not been price-clipped and is now within a protective sleeve.