"Valmouth" 1956 FIRBANK, Ronald
$150
FIRBANK, Ronald
[127] pp.
Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
1956
8 1/2" x 5 3/4"
Illustrated in colour and line by Philippe Jullian
VG/ VG
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Valmouth is a 1919 novel by British author Ronald Firbank. Valmouth is an imaginary English spa resort that attracts centenarians owing to its famed pure air. The town's name evokes actual seaside towns in the southwest peninsula of Britain, such as Falmouth, Dartmouth, Teignmouth, Exmouth and Weymouth.
The novel's plot concerns, among other things, the effects of a black woman and her niece moving into a spa resort inhabited by wealthy centenarians. The ironic novel is about eroticism and exoticism in the milieu of quaint but lewd old British ladies at the fictional spa. The novel is noted for its florid and baroque style and parody-like humour, and its sexual innuendos both heterosexual and homosexual. There is also a fanciful brand of Catholicism, a blend of mortification of the flesh, high-flown mysticism, and proselytism.
Valmouth has some claim to be the most consistently fantastic of all the Firbank extravaganzas, and was once described by its author as ""finished and complete."