Author: Ernest Ryman
Publisher: Michael Joseph, London
Year: first printing, 1958
Size: 208 x 140 x 22 mm
Language: English
192 pages, offset printed and hard bound
Design: Donald Green
Very good and clean hardcover copy, slight yellowing of pages.
Dustjacket: very good, minor damage
Postage & packing not included
Teddy Boys and Girls were a British rock’n’ roll subculture in the 1950s. Drawing inspiration from British Edwardian-era dandies Teddy Boys wore drape jackets, drainpipe trousers, loose-collared white shirts, Slim Jim ties and suede creepers, while Teddy Girls (or Judies) wore drape jackets, pencil skirts, rolled-up jeans, cameo brooches and clutch bags. The violent and delinquent life-style of the Teddy Boys and Girls was documented and sensationalised in the 1953 film noir Cosh Boy by Lewis Gilbert and in Ernest Ryman’s 1958 pulp novel Teddy Boy, a hardcover copy of which has been made available from the Sea Urchin archives:
“Jimmy Alban is a Teddy boy whose career ends in murder, and this is the story of his successive steps on the path towards an unusually mean and horrible crime. But it is only towards the end of the story that the paths of Jimmie Alban and Charlie Bowker cross. Charlie also claims to be a Teddy boy, but in his case the reasons for a distorted view of life become apparent as we follow his progress through Fulwood, which is an Approved School – one of those places to which we send youthful delinquents…” (from the blurb of the book)