Wheels Within Wheels

Autobiography

by Dervla Murphy

John Murray, 1979, [First Edition], ISBN 0719536499, black and white photographic plates, hardcover, dust jacket

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with rubbing and bumping to edges and corners (see photographs)

“Dervla Murphy’s bicycle journey from Ireland to India in 1963 – recounted in her first book, Full Tilt – was the fulfilment of a twenty-year-old ambition.  The origins of that adventure are revealed in this autobiography, which also describes a variety of the author’s eccentric antecedents.  Her parents on their marriage moved from Dublin to Lismore, in the beautiful Blackwater Valley.  Dervla was born later that year and, within months of her birth, crippling arthritis struck her mother.  This book is a vivid, honest, and often funny account of a strange upbringing.  Dervla’s County Librarian father, devoted to his wife and daughter, was withdrawn, bookish and impractical while her mother, intellectual, maternal and house-proud, was immensely practical but physically utterly dependent.  Dervla, their only child, lovingly yet egocentric, thoughtful yet a slow developer, was determined from the start to establish her own values and become a writer.”