Time for a Tiger; The Enemy in the Blanket; Beds in the East.
 
First editions, first impressions: London: William Heinemann, 1956; 1958; 1959.
 
Three volumes, octavo. Original cloth, respectively light blue, dark blue, and light blue, spines lettered in gilt and silver. Time for a Tiger with the original pictorial dust jacket designed by R. F. Micklewright priced 13s 6d net; The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East each with the original pictorial dust jackets designed by John Rowland, both of which are price-clipped.
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The bindings are clean and square throughout, with only light shelf wear at the extremities. Internally the books are fresh and well preserved, save for a little spotting to preliminaries of vol I and some toning and spotting to edges. Small bookseller stickers to bottom of front paste-downs of vols II and III. Time for a Tiger is inscribed by the author on a slip affixed to the front free endpaper: “To Florence – with gratitude for all she has done for my sister. Anthony Burgess.”
 
Some fading to spine panel of vol I with tape reinforcements to verso with some spotting to verso and lower panel. Dust jacket of vol II is price-clipped with moderate edge wear and some nicks and chips to edges; a little spotted and toned to verso. A few small chips and nicks to dust jacket of vol III, which is also price clipped and has some associated creasing and chipping to a tear to spine foot.
 
Burgess’s celebrated Malayan trilogy, beginning with his first novel, Time for a Tiger, and continued in The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East, established his reputation as one of the most original comic novelists of the post-war period. The lightly fictionalised colonial setting, acute social satire, and linguistic play already point towards the stylistic daring of his later work. The present set—complete with original jackets—represents an attractive and desirable early Burgess grouping, enhanced by the deeply personal inscription to a friend who cared for his sister, Muriel Wilson before she sadly succumbed to the Spanish flu in 1918.