The Haunted Storm.

Bookseller Notes

Inscribed by the author on the half-title, amending the title to his preferred original: 'The Two Brothers. To Laurence Lee, with best wishes, Philip Pullman. Since I wrote it I feel justified in substituting my original title, which I prefer in any case...!'With two contemporary autograph letters signed by the author to the same recipient, of Gravesend in Kent (and not the author of the same name): in the first of which, 2pp., Pullman recollects Lee as an expert on architecture that he had encountered whilst working at a library, which leads to a digression on the nature of his memory; he will, he continues, be delighted to sign Lee's copies of this work, and mentions his fledgling teaching-career - 'a bitter process [...] At the moment I am trying to teach 15 year old thugs about the beauty of words & the delights and value of English literature [...] My soul is acquiring the texture of chip-board'; he signs as Philip Pullman, but adds in parentheses 'or Nick - not that it matters - both are genuine'); the second letter, 1p. signed as 'Nick Pullman', accompanies the book and refers to work in hand - 'more in the field of drama, radio & TV', including 'a radio play called The Tiger in the Well about 19th Century Hungary', but he does 'have a novel or 2 in my head'.The scarce first edition of Pullman's first book, written shortly after graduating from Exeter College, Oxford, whilst a Librarian in Westminster (in his letters, now living in Dorset, Pullman pauses to castigate 'noxious London'), the joint winner of the publisher's Young Writers' Award - the praise for this work of Lady Antonia Fraser, one of the judges in that competition, features on the front flap. The novel tells the story, as Pullman's favoured title suggests, of two brothers of contrasting character - one good, the other evil. Against the backdrop of local child murders, his hero Matthew finds the possibility of redemption in the discovery of a Mithraic temple. The short Sunday Times review enclosed observed 'latent talent' in the 'mystical melodrama', but noted that the influences of Hesse and Dostoevsky were a little 'undigested'. Pullman would come to judge the book more harshly, effectively disowning it.