= Rare first edition in original dustjacket with belly-band recommendation by the Book Society and with autograph dedication signed. Dustjacket frayed and slightly darkened; strengthened on front-flap fold-ends with sellotape on inside; mounted label on front pastedown. Fine copy of a scarce title (no copies of this first edition istedn online at the time of cataloguing). From the blog Ëardley Beswick" by Steve Holland (2015)): "Eardley Beswick [Manchester 1885 - Exmouth 1979] seemed destined for success as a writer when his debut novel appeared. Original Design received many glowing reviews - not only the UK - and was a fine example of what Orwell might have reluctantly called proletarian literature. The book was acclaimed by Compton Mackenzie as "the most irresistibly absorbing novel for a twelvemonth" and was the first recommendation of the Book Society. More than one review compared the novel to Arnold Bennett's Imperial Palace, which followed the inner workings of a hotel based on the Savoy Hotel; in Original Design we followed the activities of a large iron factory in the Midlands at the beginning of the Depression. It introduces scores of characters and shows their lives and loves against the background of Jabez Perriman, Sons & Co., the factory in which they all work and on the success of which they all depend. The factory, employing 1,200 men, is headed by Henty Perriman, compelled to assume the position on the death of his brother Jabez who "had killed himself patriotically making money too strenuously during the war." Through the novel the reader meets members of the board, the general manager of the works, department heads, draftsmen, secretaries, foremen, typists and artisans. The chief character followed is Reggie Pernett, the draftsman who invented the original design of the title for presses that can be used to manufacture unbreakable glass which save Perrimans from going into bancruptcy. Due to Pernett's innocence and financial hardship, Henty Perriman is able to take the credit and the profits. Elmer Davis in Saturday Review, observed "as it should always be in a good novel, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; the real excellence of the story is its picture of an industry; the type of all Industry, in prosperity and depression." The Technocrats can find a good deal of nourishment in this book; and if the Marxians only knew it, its dispassionate picture of the five greedy and stupid men who dispose of the capital of Perrimans' stockholders and the lives of its employees is far more effective collectivist propaganda than conscientiously "proletarian" fiction. Mr. Beswick, apparently, has no panaceas; his only hope is in "a society immunized against this cumulative environmental hardening of the hearts... the fact that the author has no axe to grind makes his grimly disinterested picture of things as they are all the more effective." Beswick followed up this worthy and well-received novel with a series of thrillers under the pen-name Fareman Wells and under his own name."