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A LONG TRIP TO TEATIME
Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, 1st Edition 1976. 4to. 120pp. Frontispiece, profuse and wonderful full-page eched illustrations by the great Fulvio Testa, coloured marbled endpapers. Very good clean tight sound square, attractive bookplate to pastedown, address inscriptions to fly-leaf, no further marks of any kind. Very good in bright silver lettered red cloth rubbed to tail of spine, together with unclipped original pictorial dustwrapper chipped to head. ' A little masterpiece in a category of its own.'
- GenresLiteratureFiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
3 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Burgess
358 books4,265 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).
He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .
Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).
He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 28, 2020
And once again, here is yet another book which I have personally chosen not to complete, here is yet another novel that I am giving up on in frustration and thereby of course also considering with just one star (because in my opinion, I have indeed and most definitely read more than enough to in my opinion be justified with granting just that one star).
For while the general premise of Anthony Burgess' 1976 children's novel A Long Trip to Teatime seemed right up my proverbial reading alley so to speak when I discovered a used copy at a local independent bookshop about a year and a half ago (with its time travelling and school story elements, and with main character Edgar also encountering some of Great Britain's most famous and well-known historical figures during his romps through time), the always rather artificial feeling humour of A Long Trip to Teatime really started to almost immediately and massively rather get on my nerves and under my skin like a persistent and itchy case of annoying poison ivy.
Furthermore, that Anthony Burgess is obviously (and in my humble opinion) also trying way too hard with A Long Trip to Teatime to make his text akin and alike to Louis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland but in my opinion without much if in fact any of Carroll's verbal brilliance, this has all made me not only very keen on abandoning A Long Trip to Teatime but to also point out that on a writing style level, I for one strongly do think that Anthony Burgess is actually and in fact engaging in some rather obvious structural plagiarism of Lewis Carroll (and well, if A Long Trip to Teatime is somehow supposed to be an actual homage to Lewis Carroll, I really do not think that Burgess has succeeded at all well, that this pale and lifeless reflection really does absolutely nothing, or at least that it has done absolutely nothing at all to and for me, and that yes indeed, I was also of course expecting considerably more text and story wise from Anthony Burgess and have therefore been totally and utterly disappointed and even made rather livid and furious with regard to his A Long Trip to Teatime).
For while the general premise of Anthony Burgess' 1976 children's novel A Long Trip to Teatime seemed right up my proverbial reading alley so to speak when I discovered a used copy at a local independent bookshop about a year and a half ago (with its time travelling and school story elements, and with main character Edgar also encountering some of Great Britain's most famous and well-known historical figures during his romps through time), the always rather artificial feeling humour of A Long Trip to Teatime really started to almost immediately and massively rather get on my nerves and under my skin like a persistent and itchy case of annoying poison ivy.
Furthermore, that Anthony Burgess is obviously (and in my humble opinion) also trying way too hard with A Long Trip to Teatime to make his text akin and alike to Louis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland but in my opinion without much if in fact any of Carroll's verbal brilliance, this has all made me not only very keen on abandoning A Long Trip to Teatime but to also point out that on a writing style level, I for one strongly do think that Anthony Burgess is actually and in fact engaging in some rather obvious structural plagiarism of Lewis Carroll (and well, if A Long Trip to Teatime is somehow supposed to be an actual homage to Lewis Carroll, I really do not think that Burgess has succeeded at all well, that this pale and lifeless reflection really does absolutely nothing, or at least that it has done absolutely nothing at all to and for me, and that yes indeed, I was also of course expecting considerably more text and story wise from Anthony Burgess and have therefore been totally and utterly disappointed and even made rather livid and furious with regard to his A Long Trip to Teatime).
December 23, 2021
this book is always a wonderfully surreal treat. especially the german audiobook version by harry rowohlt that i've been listening to for years is very nice and funny . it perfectly captures the feeling of an especially weird and irritating dream that is not quite a night mare while being incredibly intelligent and philosophical.
November 3, 2008
This was disappointingly not as wonderful as I thought it would be. That said, it was pretty wonderful. Historical jokes, literary puns, and playing playing playing with language as only our droog Anthony Burgess can do, O my brothers. Bolshy great light reading, in the vein of The Phantom Tollbooth.
June 11, 2023
Although in some ways the book requires some cultural background on the part of the reader to appreciate all the references (as in Alice in Wonderland, although it's not as obvious there), it still has some value to the average person like me. The plot, if you can call it that, is very twisted, which is typical of a dream, but the ending is wonderful. Overall, the book is surreal enough for me to enjoy.
September 14, 2025
This story is based on Alice in Wonderland. This is the story of a young boy who falls asleep at his desk and travels down the ink bottle hole in his desk. He has many adventures and meets some strange people. The story would have more meaning for those who know their British history about the Anglo-Saxon kings and the politics of of the times.
November 3, 2021
3.5 stars. eccentric & laugh-out-loud funny but some bits were too outlandish to follow. i never expected to read about a mouse explaining the theory of relativity in a way that was actually easy to follow.
June 19, 2017
Grappig en oo knog leerzaam.
August 8, 2018
Anthony Burgess's A Long Trip to Teatime is a fantastic voyage that takes place during a boring school lecture about the Anglo-Saxon kings of England, all of whose names seemed to begin with the letter "e". Young Edgar vanishes through a pinhole in his desk and winds up at Easter Island -- not the Easter Island -- but another one, where all the place names begin with the letter "e".
Young Edgar makes his way to Edenborough, where he is imprisoned in a castle and allowed to escape only if he correctly answers a number of questions. All is well until the last question, which is a humdinger. Edgar is asked to explain the theory of relativity, which he succeeds in doing with the help of a mouse named Albert.
The Dover edition has the original illustrations by Fulvio Testa, which is what drew me to the book in the first place. Well worth a look.
Young Edgar makes his way to Edenborough, where he is imprisoned in a castle and allowed to escape only if he correctly answers a number of questions. All is well until the last question, which is a humdinger. Edgar is asked to explain the theory of relativity, which he succeeds in doing with the help of a mouse named Albert.
The Dover edition has the original illustrations by Fulvio Testa, which is what drew me to the book in the first place. Well worth a look.
October 14, 2010
2003 wrote: Wow, what a trip. An insanely metaphorical novel disguised as a children's novel. Beautifully illustrated. Beginning and end tie together very nicely.
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December 27, 2020Read reviews of this & other books at https://miscmss.blogspot.com/2020/07/...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews