Gay Hunter

Gay Hunter (1934) is a time-travel adventure by J. Leslie Mitchell, the Scottish author better known under his pen name Lewis Grassic Gibbon. An American archaeologist named Gay Hunter is accidentally projected 20,000 years into the future alongside three companions, including two English fascists who represent, in Mitchell’s view, the worst impulses of their age. The Britain they encounter has emerged from civilizational collapse into a pastoral, post-technological society populated by the Singers, a free and peaceful hunting people living among the overgrown ruins of the old world. In an abandoned tower, Gay discovers recordings left behind by the dying civilization that preceded the collapse called the Hierarchies. It was a technocratic ruling order that maintained a global underclass of “sub-men” until a catastrophic uprising destroyed both rulers and ruled alike. Mitchell described the novel in his dedicatory letter as having “no serious intent whatever,” written instead “for the glory of sun and wind and rain,” yet its anti-fascist and primitivist sympathies stand out nevertheless.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, green cloth stamped in gilt on spine. London: William Heinemann, 1934. #10720.
A couple faint stains to front and rear covers. Bookstore stamp on rear free endpaper. Overall, a very good copy with slight wear to the extremities. Lacking the dust jacket.