Beyond a Boundary.

Presentation copy - inscribed to Vivian Virtue. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to Jamaican poet and translator Vivian Lancaster Virtue: 'For Vivian Virtue / with best wishes from C.L.R. James / Jun 4 1966 / 115 Mansfield Road / London NW3.'

While James' book has for decades been considered the finest book written about the game of cricket, the book could not, at first, find a publisher. James' friend, the Barbadian novelist George Lamming, used the success of his book In the Castle of My Skin to sell James' manuscript to Hutchinson.

'It was a book CLR had to write. He understood the game, he believed, in ways most experts did not and could not... and he saw the game not only as it was played but as it was lived - and for West Indians that meant first of all a colonial society stratified by race and class... establishing early the interconnection between cricket and race and class divisions opens the way for Beyond a Boundary to fulfil its author's full purpose: to draw out other startling connections - cricket and art, life in ancient Greece, even rewriting English social history with cricket's great WG Grace as a crucial figure... CLR approached each area of concern with the method of thought learned from Marx and Hegel, and from his study of history' (James, Selma. 'How Beyond a Boundary broke down the barriers of race, class and empire.' The Guardian, 2 April, 2013).

A distinguished copy, connecting two prominent Caribbean authors.

First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author; 8vo; some faint, scattered foxing to upper edge of text block, else unmarked internally; publisher's black-brown cloth, titles and decoration to spine in gilt and white, with the unclipped dustjacket, spine very slightly sunned, a few tiny tears, some associated creasing at foot of spine, light dust-soiling to rear panel, else very good.