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Lot 212

WAUGH (EVELYN)
A Little Learning. The First Volume of an Autobiography, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED For Patrick [Balfour] from Evelyn, 10th Sept. 1964" on front free endpaper, Chapman and Hall, 1964; sold with 2 autograph postcards (one signed "E") from Evelyn Waugh to Balfour relating to A Little Learning, 5 pages of manuscript notes by Balfour about the book, and a clipping of the review he wrote for The Sunday Telegraph (small group)

27 November 2018, 13:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £3,125 inc. premium

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WAUGH (EVELYN)

A Little Learning. The First Volume of an Autobiography, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED For Patrick [Balfour] from Evelyn, 10th Sept. 1964" on front free endpaper, frontispiece and 5 plates, publisher's cloth (spine slightly faded), dust-jacket (with a list of spelling errors in the text noted in pencil by Balfour on lower flap), 8vo, Chapman and Hall, 1964; sold with 2 autograph postcards (one signed "E") from Evelyn Waugh to Balfour relating to A Little Learning, 5 pages of manuscript notes by Balfour about the book, and a clipping of the review he wrote for The Sunday Telegraph (small group)

Footnotes

PRESENTATION COPY OF A LITTLE LEARNING, INSCRIBED TO PATRICK BALFOUR, TOGETHER WITH TWO AUTOGRAPH LETTERS FROM WAUGH CONCERNING THE BOOK.

"On my last night as an undergraduate I was in a large party in Balliol from which I was lowered from a rope by Patrick Balfour at 1 a.m...." (A Little Learning). Balfour, later Baron Kinross (1904-1976) was a contemporary of Waugh at Oxford, where he was a member of the celebrated "Railway Club", but it was in the 1930s when both men were journalists in Abyssinia that their friendship was cemented. Their friendship was to last until Waugh's death in 1966. In the two cards written by Waugh (on his Combe Florey House headed paper, dated 9 and 14 September, 1964) he thanks Balfour "his kind corrections", acknowledging that "the book is a mass of mistakes, mine & the printers". He mentions Plunket Greene's name being "hyphenated by deed poll", Jack McDougall's error on the spelling of "Wykhamist", noting about an anecdote "I dare say you are right. I was not at the party & wrote from second-hand", confirming that the memory of Balfour and that the rope is "certainly correct" (Balfour had no memory of it). He signs off, saying "I look forward to your magnum opus", referring to the imminent publication of Balfour's Atatürk. The Rebirth of a Nation (1964).

Balfour reviewed A Little Learning for The Sunday Telegraph (13 September 1964), stating that "what makes this book an especial delight is Mr. Waugh's picture of Oxford in the 1920s... the flavour of a lost past which so many of the his pages recapture". His own notes on the text are written on the letter from the newspaper offices commissioning his review.

Provenance: Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross (1904-1976).

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