Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. DOUBLE-SIGNED AND INSCRIBED FIRST EDITION, WITH POLAROID OF LE CARRÃ AND HIS WIFE JANE CORNWELL LE CARRÃ , John Fine & Rare: General

Full black cloth, unfaded. Gilt lettering to spine; stylised figure of Smiley in gilt to spine and bottom outer corner of front board. Spine very mildly cocked. 8vo. Top edges red; mild foxing to other page edges. With original colour pictorial dustwrapper, lightly sunned to spine, with full-colour image of Russian dolls to front and b/w portrait of Le Carre to rear. Mild edgewear to dustwrapper, with small closed tear (c. 1cm) to fold by front flap. Small stain (c. 1.5cm) to rear dustwrapper flap. Dustwrapper is unclipped and protected in removable clear plastic sleeve. A little faint scattered foxing to prelims; a couple of spots to text proper. Double-signed by the author on facing pages: 'For all your / hard work on / that M R James porridge - / more porridge of my own / David' to verso of half-title, and 'John le Carre / Cornwall Nov 20 1974' to title page. With a loose polaroid showing Le Carre and his wife Jane (the latter smiling, the former looking to camera) in the middle of an al fresco meal, with sea beyond, taken in Cornwall. The 'porridge' inscription is somewhat mysterious, although le Carre uses 'porridge' repeatedly elsewhere in the sense of hodgepodge or muddle: there is 'a bit of a serious legal porridge to sort out' in the 2017 A Legacy of Spies (Viking, p. 18), while in a late letter to his brother, he asks himself 'So how was it all, this 80-year-old-life?', with the answer: 'A total porridge really, with love of family the one abiding, triumphant discovery' (A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carre 1945-2020). There is perhaps here an echo of the Russian idiom 'to make porridge', as in 'to make a mess' or 'get oneself into trouble'. This volume was inscribed to le Carrà 's doctor, so the muddle here was perhaps medical, although the 'M R James' reference remains confusing, if suggestive. James enjoyed something of a cultural moment in the 70s: the classic series of television films 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' ran between 1971 and 1978, the first five of them being adaptations of M. R. James' ghost stories. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was Le Carre's seventh novel and the fifth to feature the character George Smiley. The novel introduced (and in most cases invented) an array of now-classic spy jargon, including 'mole' and 'honey trap'. Often considered to be le Carre's finest work, its 'awful convergence of private and public', with Smiley's wife caught in an affair with the Philby-esque double agent Bill Haydon, occasions 'the greatest strength of le Carreâ s writing, namely its grip and push on the history of its time' (ODNB). It was also the first of le Carre's spy novels to be published with Hodder & Stoughton, which had become his publisher after he married Jane Eustace (later Cornwell) in 1972. Jane was foreign rights manager at Hodder & Stoughton and, after their marriage, Le Carre's literary agent. Bodley's Librarian Richard Ovenden (the Bodleian holds Le Carre's archive) has written of the 'deep process of collaboration' between Le Carre and his wife on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which went through almost 30 drafts, Jane typing each one up to be heavily revised by Le Carre in manuscript and with the help of 'scissors and staple-gun'; her 'constructively editorial' collaboration was to continue through Le Carre's subsequent career (Ovenden, 'John le Carreâ s archivist', The Conversation, December 18, 2020). Their son, Nick Cornwell, recalls how there were 'at each turn, fresh problems to be solved, fresh insights and flourishes of invention', with Jane's contribution 'never dramatic', but 'ubiquitous and persisting throughout the body of work' ('My father was famous as John le Carre. My mother was his crucial, covert collaborator', Guardian, March 13, 2021). Double-signed first edition of a classic work, with polaroid of author with his wife and editorial collaborator. Robust packaging. Tracking can be added to overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs.