A Conversation Piece
INSCRIBED TO FRANK AND ELIZABETH PAKENHAM
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. Edges uncut. Author's presentation copy, inscribed on the front end paper, "Frank + Elizabeth with love from Evelyn" A near fine copy, with the spine a little faded as usual, but a crisp bright copy. Internally fresh with just a little foxing to the endpapers.
Waugh knew Frank Pakenham and Elizabeth Harman at Oxford. He also met Pakenham's sister, Pansy who introduced him to her best friend, Evelyn Gardner, to whom Waugh became engaged and briefly and disastrously married. Pakenham's family had many associations among the literary bright young things: his other sister Violet was to marry Anthony Powell.
Waugh valued Pakenham's social and political connections, and chose him as godfather to his eldest son Auberon. He was also a model for the character of Erridge, the eccentric socialist peer, in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time.
Stock ID: 41838
£5,750.00
