F I N E B O O K S & M A N U S C R I P T S
One Of 50 For Private Distribution, Inscribed For Penelope Betjeman
36. Edmund Campion WAUGH, Evelyn
Longmans, 1935. First edition, limited issue. Number 38 of 50 copies “for private distri- bution”. Inscribed by Waugh for Penelope Betjeman on the front free endpaper, “Pe- nelope with love from Evelyn”. Publisher’s red buckram with gilt titles to the spine. A very good copy, faded to spine. [42526] £4,500 An exceptional presentation copy. Penelope Chetwode married Waugh’s friend John Betjeman in 1933. Despite a decades long at- tempt to convert John from Anglicanism to Catholicism, Waugh never could convince him to, though Penelope did convert in 1948.
Inscribed For John And Penelope Betjeman
37. A Little Learning The First Volume of an Autobiography WAUGH, Evelyn
Chapman & Hall, 1964. First edition. Grey boards lettered in silver, in original dust- wrapper. Inscribed by Waugh for John and Penelope Betjeman on the front free endpa- per, “For John & Penelope, with love from Evelyn, 10th Sept 1964”. With an annotation in Betjeman’s hand to p. 192, indicating that Waugh’s “friend of my heart” who he calls “Hamish Lennox” is in fact “Alistair Graham”. A very good copy in a very good dustwrapper. [42525] £5,000 An exceptional association copy, uniting two of the most prominent British authors of the twen- tieth century. Waugh and Betjeman met at Oxford, and Waugh remained friends and correspondents with him and his wife Penelope. Penelope was very much Waugh’s muse when he wrote Helena (1950), and Waugh confided in a 1945 letter to Betjeman, “I am writing her life under the disguise of St Helena’s”. When Betjeman wrote of his enjoyment of the novel on publication five years later, Waugh replied, “It is you & six or seven others whom I seek to please in writing”. The initial volume of Waugh’s autobiography documenting his youth and education. His death two years after this publication meant that his autobiography was never completed.
49
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online