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121 WAUGH, Evelyn. A Handful of Dust. London: Chapman & Hall, 1934 A transatlantic old-money association First edition, first impression, in the scarce jacket, this an excellent association copy, from the library of Waugh’s friend Louis Auchincloss, with his bookplate and blind stamp on the front free endpaper. This social satire “written in bile” (McDonnell) is a fitting attestation to their friendship: Waugh and Auchincloss were both acerbic critics of the high society that was their subject matter and milieux. Waugh was an admirer of Auchincloss, who made a name for himself as a chronicler of Manhattan’s old-money elite. He praised Auchincloss’s early literary endeavours: “the conception of every story is stunningly mature and most skilfully achieved. It is hard to believe they are the work of a beginner” (quoted in Gelderman, p. 110), and compared him to Lieutenant Padfield in Unconditional Surrender (1961): he is “very much like what I conceive my character ‘the Loot’ to be” (26 February 1961, Letters , p. 561). Auchincloss’s Wall Street office contained “a handsome glass cabinet [that] displayed not law books but first editions – the complete Edith Wharton, the first poems of Emily Dickinson, an early novel of Evelyn Waugh, a mint copy of Swann’s Way” – it is possible that this is the copy referenced (Gelderman, p. 152). A Handful of Dust is “widely regarded as his masterpiece, a satire on the collapse of civilized values, concentrating on the barbarism of contemporary sexual mores and divorce” ( ODNB ). Harold Acton has noted the biographical allusions in this title, the “black humour and vein of cruelty, sharpened by the failure of his early marriage. A Handful of Dust was written in his blood” (quoted in McDonnell, p. 68). Octavo. Original red and black snakeskin-patterned cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. With frontispiece, 3 pages of advertisements at rear.
Spine cocked, extremities rubbed, two tiny marks to front cover, couple of small spots of abrasion to front pastedown, contents clean. A very good copy indeed in the fragile jacket, spine panel toned, chip to head of spine and front flap fold, some nicks and short closed tears, two longer tears to rear spine fold and head of rear panel. ¶ Mark Amory, ed., The Letters of Evelyn Waugh , 1980; Carol W. Gelderman, Louis Auchincloss: A Writer’s Life , 2007; Jacqueline McDonnell, Evelyn Waugh , 1988. £9,750 [155339] 122 WELLS, H. G. The Invisible Man. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1897 First edition, first impression, rare presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, “W. W. Jacobs from H. G. Wells”, with the recipient’s embroidered silk bookmarker laid in. The recipient was Wells’s friend and fellow writer, the author of the enduring “The Monkey’s Paw”, which is frequently anthologised and studied alongside Wells’s “The Moth”. Despite being left-wing in his youth, Jacobs described his political opinions in later years as “conservative and individualistic”, and he was on friendly terms with Wells, despite openly disdaining his politics. Although W. W. Jacobs’s popularity has fallen in contrast to that of Wells, at one time only Kipling commanded a higher price for short fiction in The Strand Magazine . Originally serialized in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897, The Invisible Man was influential in establishing Wells’s reputation as the father of science fiction. Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to front board and spine gilt, device to front board in black. Housed in a red quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Contents browned as usual, spine faded and a little rolled, rear inside board slightly affected by damp with a little bleed onto endpapers, still very good. ¶ Currey p. 520; Hammond B4; Wells Soc.11. £12,500 [158489]
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