Joyce Cary wrote two trilogies, or triptychs as he later preferred to call them. The first comprises: Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth. The Horse's Mouth is a portrait of an artistic temperament. Its principal character, Gulley Gimson, is an impoverished painter who scorns conventional good behaviour. He may be a bad citizen, but he is a good artist, so wholly preoccupied with his art that he is willing to endure any privation for its sake. Such is his contempt for orthodox mores, he takes a delight in cocking a snook at them. For him there is only one morality: to be a painter. 'Mr Joyce Cary is an important and exciting writer; there's no doubt about that. To use Tennyson's phrase, he is a Lord of Language ... if you like rich writing full of gusto and accurate original character drawing, you will get it from The Horse's Mouth.' John Betjeman, Daily Herald

The Horse's Mouth

Education & Teaching

Cary, Joyce

Schools & Teaching

Harper Row Publishers

An artist tramp meets only hostility and persecution when he attempts to paint a vast mural of The Creation

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Perennial

The Horse's Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary's First Trilogy, is perhaps the finest novel ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? a has-been? or an exhausted, drunken ne'er-do-well? He is without doubt a visionary, and as he criss-crosses London in search of money and inspiration the world as seen though his eyes appears with a newly outrageous and terrible beauty.

The Horse's Mouth (Penguin Modern Classics)

Penguin??Books

A temporary clerk, still on probation, Mr Johnson has been in Fada, Nigeria, for six months and is already much in debt. Undaunted, he entertains on the grandest scale, with drums and smuggled gin. Not only that, he intends to pay a small fortune for his wife ...  First published in 1939, Mister Johnson marked the end of Joyce Cary's series of Nigerian-based novels, derived from his own days in the Nigerian Colonial Service (1913-1919). William Boyd has described the novel as, 'A wonderfully evocative portrait of a bygone colonial life ... Mr Johnson, in short, is a great literary creation; he can safely take his place beside any of the enduring characters world literature has presented us with: from Falstaff to Zeno, from Candide to Humbert Humbert.'

Modern Classics Mister Johnson

Contemporary

A temporary clerk, still on probation, Mister Johnson has been in Fada, Nigeria, for six months and is already in debt. Undaunted, he not only entertains on the grandest scale with drums and smuggled gin, but also intends to pay a small fortune for a wife.

Mister Johnson (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics S)

Penguin

True to the preoccupations of Cary's novels written in the 1940s, The Moonlight emphasizes individual moral freedom and self-determination. Rose is a frail but willful spinster who becomes head of the family estate and self-appointed guardian of morality. Her death triggers painful memories for her sister Ella, who must confront the tragic consequences of a family's guilt, relentless martyrdom and denial of romantic love.

Moonlight (Everyman's Library)

Everyman Paperback Classics

Drawing upon Cary's own experience as a member of the Nigerian political service in 1913, An American Visitor records the impressions and awakenings of Marie, an idealistic anthropologist who believes she has discerned the Kingdom of Heaven in the village of Nok. Colonial betrayal, white prospectors who stake claims within Birri territory, and a deepening relationship with the eccentric District Officer lead Marie to re-examine the perils of her own charmed position.

American Visitor (Everyman Library)

Orion Publishing Group

Herself Surprised

Riverrun Pr

“Splendid entertainment, a peep show and a vivid analysis, full of sympathy and abounding in madly logical ridiculousness.” The Observer  “To find a novelist who saw more deeply and conveyed more truly you have to go back to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Balzac and Goethe, Mann and Hesse.” Bernard Levin  “One of the best of our novelists, certainly one of the most original, in the great early tradition of Defoe and Fielding.” Elizabeth Bowen  “A patient and penetrating analysis of children’s minds.” The Times   Among Charley Brown’s first deeds as an evacuee to Longwater in the West Country was to let loose the local bull. Boys who one minute had taunted him with the refrain ‘Ballocky baldy’ (Charley’s lice had been evacuated from London with him), were the next minute acknowledging him as their natural leader.   Charley Brown, one of Joyce Cary’s most uproarious and memorable creations, is a love and a terror. He is a quivering jelly in the hands of girls and women of any age who show him kindness; through the wild force of his imagination he holds children rapt with tales of desperate gunmen with exquisite manners and a taste for the beautiful.   Delinquent and aesthete, he leads his gang into daring acts both grand and bad. As Charley’s sweetheart Lizzy Galor rightly puts it, he’s every bit as good as the movies...

Charley is My Darling

Michael, Joseph

Harper Brothers

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Books by Cary, Joyce

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cary, Joyce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Horse's Mouth

The Horse's Mouth

The Horse's Mouth (Penguin Modern Classics)

Modern Classics Mister Johnson

Mister Johnson (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics S)

Moonlight (Everyman's Library)

American Visitor (Everyman Library)

Herself Surprised

Charley is My Darling

Herself Surprised