Age of Consent (First Australian Edition)

Norman Lindsay’s comic novel of a Sydney painter and his young model, in its first Australian edition, illustrated throughout by the author.

Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) wrote and illustrated this novel in 1938. It tells of Bradly Mudgett, a forty-year-old Sydney painter, who goes to the coastal town of Wantabadgeree to paint seascapes. There he meets Cora Ryan, a wild adolescent girl who becomes his model and muse, along with a cast that includes his fox terrier, Edmund, and the gin-drinking Old Mother Spadget. Lindsay’s illustrations are as pungent as his prose. The novel was first published in 1938 in London by T. Werner Laurie and in New York by Farrar & Rinehart, under a title Lindsay had first called Isolates in Limbo. Customs held it up at the docks that year, but the Commonwealth Literature Censorship Board passed it in February 1939, and it was not subject to the long ban often claimed for it. The Ure Smith edition of 1962 is the first to appear in Australia under the author’s illustrations. It was adapted as a film in 1969, directed by Michael Powell, with James Mason and Helen Mirren.

First Australian Edition. Small octavo, [iv], 236pp., with black-and-white illustrations by Lindsay throughout. Original teal cloth boards in the original pictorial dust jacket, illustrated by Lindsay, unclipped and priced 22s. 6d. Fine, in near fine dust jacket. Small tear to jacket at upper spine crease. Single small marking to foredge. A beautiful, bright copy in a crisp dust jacket.

Not currently on display in store. For viewing or more information, please contact: rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au

Catalogue Number: HH000934