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“admirable, admirable, admirable . . . one of the most distinguished histories of the war . . . an imperishable pleasure”. The first is genuinely uncommon, this an unusually well-preserved copy. “One of the best first-hand descriptions of a pilot’s life at this time can be found in Winged Victory by Victor Yeates, who at that time was a lieutenant flying Sopwith Camel single-seater fighters with No. 46 Squadron from Le Hameau airfield just behind Arras. Yeates completed a seven-month spell of operational flying, which included the March Offensive, and made 163 operational flights totalling 248 hours. He crashed four times – twice shot down by German fire and twice accidentally. His book, nominally fiction, is recognised as being an authentic account of his time with No. 46 Squadron, and it vividly describes the strain of low-level flying over the battlefield and engaging German infantry with bombs and machine- guns during the course of the German spring offensive” (Middlebrook, p. 281). Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in silver, top edge blue. With typographical dust jacket, unclipped. Jacket a little rubbed, particularly on the folds and at top edge of front panel, light scatter of foxing, short splits and crumpling at head of spine, lined sometime with a strip of plain paper, mild yellowing at edges of boards, occasional spot of foxing to text block, production fault to last two leaves which are miscut and stand a little proud at the fore-edge; remains a very good copy indeed, presents well. ¶ Martin Middlebrook, The Kaiser’s Battle, 2007 ; other material from The Henry Williamson Society website. £1,250 [154336]
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179 WOOLF, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1929 A STUNNING COPY OF WOOLF’S FEMINIST LITERARY MANIFESTO First trade edition of Woolf’s feminist literary manifesto, in which she assesses the history of women as writers and the challenges they have faced. The work is based on two papers read to the Arts Society at Newnham College and the Odtaa Society at Girton College in October 1928. The signed limited edition was issued simultaneously in the USA and in the UK three days earlier. Loosely inserted is a contemporary four-page advertisement issued by The Hogarth Press for “a cheap uniform edition, of small and convenient size, of the works of Virginia Woolf”. The first volumes in the “New Uniform Edition” were published in September 1929, a month prior to this work.
Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With the dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell. Publisher’s advertisement sheet loosely inserted. Housed in a custom blue morocco folding box. Minor browning to free endpapers, as usual, foxing to top edge; a fine and crisp copy in the like dust jacket. ¶ Kirkpatrick A12.b. £9,500 [154346] 180 YEATES, Victor Maslin. Winged Victory. London: Jonathan Cape, 1934 MASTERLY ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN THE AIR First edition, an excellent copy, of the autobiographical novel widely regarded as one of the most realistic and moving account of aerial combat in the First World War. Publication was encouraged by Henry Williamson, a school friend of Yeates, who pursued T. E. Lawrence for a few words for Cape to use in promotional publicity. Although initially reticent to comment, Lawrence was forced to concede that it was
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