The Great Fortune was published by William Heinemann in 1960, the first volume of what would become the Balkan Trilogy (completed by The Spoilt City and Friends and Heroes) and eventually the first half of Manning’s six-novel sequence The Fortunes of War — widely regarded as the finest British fiction about World War II.
Harriet Pringle arrives in Bucharest in autumn 1939, newly married to Guy — a British Council lecturer, large, extroverted, generous to everyone except his wife. They barely know each other (the marriage was impulsive), and the novel follows their first year together against the backdrop of Romania’s increasingly desperate political situation: caught between Germany and Russia, its fragile democratic government unable to resist either.
Manning’s achievement is to interweave the intimate and the historical with equal conviction: Harriet’s growing understanding of her husband (his need to be liked by everyone, his inability to prioritize their marriage, his political naivety) unfolds alongside Bucharest’s transformation from cosmopolitan playground to occupied city. The personal and the political mirror each other: just as Harriet must decide whether her marriage is viable, Romania must decide whether its independence is survivable.
The social world Manning creates is extraordinary: émigré communities, diplomatic circles, British expatriates, Romanian aristocrats, Jewish refugees, and political opportunists — all observed with a precision that reveals character through social performance.
Collecting The Great Fortune
First edition (William Heinemann, London, 1960): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- Without jacket: $10–$20