Karoo Morning / Bursting World / A Local Habitation (ALL SIGNED)

Butler, Guy: A Local Habitation. An Autobiography (1945-90) (Cape Town: David Philip, 1991) Signed by the author on the title page. 8vo; original brown boards, lettered in gilt on spine; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pp. x + 310; photographs and line drawings. Dustwrapper's spine panel slightly sunned; faint trace of spotting to endpapers and edges. Near fine condition. "This eagerly awaited third volume of Guy Butler's autobiography is even richer and wider in scope, and more varied in content, than Karoo Morning and Bursting World. It reflects the exceptional range of his interests (from Shakespeare to carpentry) and his achievements: seminal student years at Oxford (1945-7); academic apprenticeship at the University of the Witwatersrand (1948-50); Professor of English at Rhodes University since 1952. It outlines his subsequent career as a campaigner for Southern African literature in schools and universities, and his tireless devotion to the improvement of the teaching of English, as first and second language. But the Professor receives less attention than the Poet and Playwright. The emphasis falls on his imaginative life, his literary friendships and a creativity that always has a practical spin-off. He not only lectures on Shakespeare but produces his plays; he not only teaches poetry but writes it; and through anthologies and literary magazines he is assiduous in helping other poets into print. ... The significance of family, so powerful in Karoo Morning, and so frustrated by war in Bursting World, finds its fulfilment here." WITH Butler, Guy: Bursting World. An Autobiography (1936-45) (Cape Town: David Philip, 1983) Signed by the author on the title page. 8vo; original brown boards, lettered in gilt on spine; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pp. ix + (iii) + 300; photographs and line drawings. Spine panel a little sunned; occasional faint spotting. Near fine condition. "The outstandingly successful first volume of Guy Butler's autobiography, Karoo Morning, was the author's record of his first eighteen years, in Cradock in the Eastern Cape. In Bursting World, its sequel, he bursts out of his sober small-town boyhood: first into four years of heady freedom as a student at Rhodes University College, Grahamstown. ... The emphasis ... is always on people: the book is dominated by his loves, particularly for Jean, the girl he marries; by his complex bond with his younger brother; and by his friends, who range from fellow students to senior officers in the army. His five years in the army take him to Egypt, Syria and Italy, and it is as a volunteer soldier that he experiences the bursting world most dramatically, particularly during the 6th S.A. Armoured Division's year-long campaign from Cassino to the Alps. The horizons (geographical and mental) are always widening for the young man so vividly recalled in this book." WITH Butler, Guy: Karoo Morning. An Autobiography (1918-35) (Cape Town: David Philip, 1977) Signed by the author on the title page. 8vo; original brown boards, lettered in gilt on spine; pictorial dustwrapper; pp. xi + (i) + 267; plates. Dustwrapper a touch sunned on spine panel, slightly rubbed and edgeworn; spotting to edges and endpapers, sporadically elsewhere. Very good condition. "'I was given a good life in a lovable world among remarkable people.' This is Guy Butler's record of his boyhood - to the age of 18 - in Cradock in the Eastern Cape. Though all the complex strands contributing to the troubled situation in South Africa today were present, and observed, yet it was a relatively carefree time when the only serious burden a young boy was aware of was the financial stringency of the Depression. His childhood was lit by the joyous enterprises of the ebullient family of five Butler children and their multifold farming cousins, and by the sense of community in family and in the small Karoo village. This endearing, often moving, book, rich in anecdote, is infused with humour and the warmth of the memorable personalities that crowd its chapters. But above all we find the sure touch of the born storyteller and his marvellous, zestful relish in the craft of words."