J O N K E R S R A R E B O O K S
P R E S E N T A T I O N C O P I E S & M A N U S C R I P T S
WAUGH TO CHRISTOPHER SYKES 76. WAUGH, Evelyn THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD A Conversation Piece Chapman & Hall, 1957. First edition, one of about fifty large paper copies printed on hand made paper, for private circulation. Original red cloth titled in gilt to the spine. Bottom and fore edges uncut. Author’s presentation copy, inscribed on the front end paper to his friend and biographer, Christopher Sykes, “Christopher with love. Look out. It might be you next. Evelyn” A near fine copy with a touch of fading to the spine. [35421] £6,000 Author and biographer, Sykes was a close friend of Robert Byron, with whom he co-authored the 1935 work, Innocence and Design. He first met Waugh in 1929 shortly after the collapse of Waugh’s first marriage and the pair became firm friends. Sykes is now best known for his biogra - phy of Waugh, published in 1975. WAUGH TO BILL DEAKIN 77. WAUGH, Evelyn UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER Chapman & Hall, 1961. First edition. Original blue cloth in dustwrapper. Author’s presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper to Bill Deakin, “For Bill Souvenir of Bari from Evelyn October 1961”. A fine copy in a near fine dustwrapper. [35580] £2,500 Bill Deakin was parachuted in to Yugoslavia in 1943 to make contact with Tito and his Partisans. The mission was soon taken over by Fitzroy MacLean, who set up a military air base on the Italian coastal town of Bari. It was in Bari that Waugh, along with Randolph Churchill, was stationed and where Waugh first met Deakin. Waugh seems to have taken an instant liking to Deakin, in the same way that he took an instant dislike to MacLean, and regarded Deakin as one of the unsung heroes of the Yugoslavian operation for which MacLean took much of the credit. Their friendship continued in peace time when Deakin became the first warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford and was knighted in 1975.
WAUGH REVIEWS NANCY MITFORD 78. WAUGH, Evelyn ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT REVIEW OF NANCY MITFORD’S “THE WATER BEETLE” A single foolscap (214 x 328 mm) lined page containing approximately 600 words in holograph manuscript reviewing Nancy Mitford’s “The Water Beetle” for the Daily Telegraph. Signed at the head of the page, Waugh has added “proof please to Combe Florey House, Taunton” to the margin in red ink. A single horizontal crease, otherwise fine. [32072] £6,000 During its preparation, Mitford wrote to Waugh about the choice of title (taken from Hillaire Bel- loc’s A Moral Alphabet ), “I hope to disarm the critics by calling it The Water Beetle.” Waugh responded, “An excellent, disarming title making everything easy for reviewers. How I look forward to the book.” On 10th October Waugh wrote to Mitford to say he had received a copy of her book and had very much enjoyed it, apart from the “coarse” drawings by Osbert Lancaster. He mentioned that he was writing a review for the Sunday Telegraph and concludes, “I hope I say the right thing. I delight in the book.” However, Waugh’s review was as cutting and acerbic as ever, “The contemporary English literary world may be conveniently divided into: those who can write but cannot think, those who can think but cannot write, and those who can neither think nor write … Nancy Mitford, by her choice of title, puts herself in the first class.” Waugh goes on to praise the fluency of the writing in these essays, which range from childhood reminiscences to discussing Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic “and she does it all with ease, ce- lerity and grace… in the same gay artless, artful manner as though in one of those salons whose demise she tearlessly regrets… capable of such gaffes as describing Oates’s disappearance in the blizzard as suicide.” He concludes, “This accumulation of short pieces brings only delight.... [Mitford] constantly flab - bergasts the present reviewer. When most of our writers have sunk, she will still be gliding on the water’s face.” Mitford responded upon reading the printed review, “You are a brute…. Oh how I screamed at your review …many thanks for flaying me alive, poor little unpretentious Water Beetle.”
82
83
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs