{"product_id":"the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-runner-easton-press-signed-collectors-edition-1","title":"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSILLITOE, Alan.\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.\u003c\/em\u003e Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2002.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOctavo. Full dark green leather. Spine with five raised bands, gilt-decorated. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. 176 pp. \u003cstrong\u003eSigned Collector's Edition. Signed by the author on tipped-in page. Accompanied by signed Certificate of Authenticity, edition card, and bookplate (pasted to front endpaper).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlan Sillitoe (1928–2010) grew up in Nottingham in conditions of genuine poverty — his father was illiterate, the family frequently without food or heat — and left school at fourteen to work in a bicycle factory. His first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), drew directly on that experience and announced one of the most distinctive voices in postwar British fiction. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, published the following year and winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1960, consolidated the reputation and gave the literature of the period one of its defining images.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe collection contains nine stories, all set in or around Nottingham, all concerned with working-class men and boys who find themselves at odds with the systems — legal, institutional, economic — that govern their lives. The title story is its centrepiece: a boy in a Borstal reform school who discovers he has a talent for long-distance running, and who is given the opportunity to win a cross-country race against a public school and thereby bring credit to the institution that has incarcerated him. His decision about whether to win the race, and the long interior monologue that accompanies his running as he thinks it through, is one of the great acts of literary defiance in the postwar canon — an assertion that integrity and self-respect are not the exclusive property of those who have benefited from privilege, and that the system can be refused on its own terms.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTony Richardson's 1962 film adaptation, with Tom Courtenay in the title role, brought the story to a wider audience and helped define the tone of British kitchen-sink cinema. Sillitoe wrote the screenplay himself. The Easton Press Signed Modern Classics edition, signed by Sillitoe in 2002, eight years before his death, is one of the few collected editions of the work to carry his signature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVery good. \u003c\/strong\u003eSome loss to cover gilt and some markings along gilt edges. Contents fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThis book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: \u003ca title=\"Harry Hartog Rare Book Department\" href=\"mailto:rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au\"\u003erarebooks@harryhartog.com.au\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCatalogue Number: HH000611\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alan Sillitoe","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49193495953651,"sku":"1110002991615","price":80.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0634\/4284\/5939\/files\/1_556b7926-1a84-407b-8731-8458920b3905.png?v=1780448669","url":"https:\/\/www.harryhartog.com.au\/products\/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-runner-easton-press-signed-collectors-edition-1","provider":"Harry Hartog Bookseller","version":"1.0","type":"link"}