All Hallows Eve
London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1945. First edition. Small slim octavo (7 1/2 inches tall), original red cloth, gilt spine, original illustrated dust jacket. Very minor toning to A near-fine copy. Item #1303
"LONDON AS SEEN AND UNDERSTOOD BY THE SOULS OF THE DEAD"
First edition of All Hallow's Eve—the last of Charles Williams' novels to be published during his lifetime—a metaphysical thriller now considered a landmark of spiritual and fantasy literature. An exceptional copy of a generally fragile wartime edition in the original illustrated dust jacket.
The last days of the Second World War found Charles Williams greatly diminished: "As the war wound down, so did Charles Williams. An old man (old at fifty-eight!)...great themes had fled him; his prose was now little more than journalism. As All Hallows rushed to a conclusion, he declared himself 'bitterly disappointed in it'" (Zaleski and Zaleski). After emergency surgery, Williams died in May 1945, just days after the cessation of the war in Europe. Williams' death hit C.S. Lewis particularly hard and the Inklings were acutely aware of the loss, "the unavoidable gap in the circle, the void once filled by that antic energy, that puckish, dead-serious mind that reeled off ancient poetry and new ideas with a rapidity and accuracy that only Lewis could match" (Zaleski and Zaleski).
Set in wartime London, All Hallows can be considered an allegory in that "a primary purpose of the book is to illustrate Williams's particular mystical brand of Christianity." Sometimes characterized as science-fiction (but not by Wessells), "A ghost story unlike any other, All Hallows’ Eve is the final novel by the remarkable Charles Williams, whose brilliant literary excursions into the spiritual and supernatural realms remain unsurpassed more than six decades after his death. Williams was arguably the most creatively daring and ambitious of Oxford’s famed Inklings, the literary society that included such notables as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, and his chilling, breathtaking, and deeply felt fiction remains the gold standard for provocative and intelligent contemporary fantasy" (Open Road Media). The back panel of the scarce dust jacket lists "New Fiction" from Faber and Faber while the narrow inner flaps include copy for both All Hallows ("creepy enough for the most hardened reader") and The Figure of Beatrice. "This book produced in complete conformity with the authorized economy standards." Zaleski and Zaleski. The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings; Clute and Grant. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction; Currey. Catalogue of the Science and Science Fiction Library; Leeming and Drowne. Encyclopedia of Allegorical Literature.
Price: $750.00