The Washers-Up. Timperley (Rosemary) Modern First Edition

FIRST EDITION, pp. 192, crown 8vo, original green boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, dustjacket with a design by Val Biro to front and backstrip panels, the latter very gently faded with a touch of rubbing at tips, faintest of spotting to front flap, very good. Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: 'For Val, with love and thanks as always, Rosemary, November '68'. The recipient was Val Biro - the prolific dustjacket illustrator, who designed the cover for this novel (and numerous others by Timperley). A superb copy of a scarce book, with an excellent association. Timperley wrote more than sixty novels in the course of three decades, but most of her work, which embraces dark and often supernatural themes, is scarce - including the present novel, which distinguishes itself from much of her oeuvre in its engagement with contemporary popular culture. It begins with the narrator, Rose Denby, musing on her likeness to the 'Nowhere Man' of The Beatles, and references to that band, and The Kinks (their 'Dead End Street' the basis of a comparison on p. 45), recur throughout the text. The story concerns pot-washers at a hospital, where 'blackmail, murder, madness, love and death colour the apparent tedium of life in the ward kitchens' (blurb). [With:] A draft of the original dustjacket artwork by Val Biro, water-colour and gouache with some pencil sketching visible