First edition. One of fifty pre-publication copies, printed for the author for distribution amongst his friends. Original blue wrappers with yapp edges, with printed labels to upper cover, title label printed in blue, limitation label printed in red. Author's presentation copy inscribed for Lady Diana Cooper, "For Diana / Too little, but I hope not too late / with love from / Evelyn." A fine copy, exceptionally so, with the wrappers clean and bright and only the most trivial creasing and wear to the oversized parts. Endpapers foxed as often, but otherwise very clean. A superb copy.

The primary issue of Waugh's best known and most successful work. Unlike many of the large paper presentation issues of Waugh's work, the fifty copies of Brideshead form a distinct printing run from the publicly available edition issued the following year.
Waugh wrote Brideshead between February and June 1944, and completed the final corrections whilst posted in Yugoslavia with Randolph Churchill, who helped return the corrected proof in a diplomatic bag. In a letter to his agent A.D. Peters in February 1944 Waugh writes, "Would Littlebrown care to produce an edition de luxe or at least de propriété? I should like this book to be in decent form because it is very good. Failing all else can Garfield get hand-made paper for twenty copies or so at my expense?"
Fifty copies were printed and distributed by the publishers to friends as Christmas presents. Upon return from Yugoslavia, Waugh sought their reaction to the book and was uncharacteristically receptive to making changes. As a result, passages deemed to be too coarse were removed, as were elements open to legal challenge and descriptive passages were rewritten so that the published edition differed in almost every chapter.
Lady Diana Cooper was the daughter of the Duke of Rutland and the wife of Sir Alfred Duff Cooper, who was created Viscount Norwich in 1952. She met Waugh in 1932 while acting in the Max Reinhardt London production of The Miracle. Waugh, who took to Cooper immediately, memorialised her as the character Mrs. Stitch, in Scoop and later in Officers and Gentlemen and A Tourist in Africa.
John Julius Norwich, Diana Cooper's son, describes Waugh's relationship with his parents in his book of letters from his mother,
"[Waugh] had been a regular visitor at Bognor before the war and now the war was over he came back into our lives. He had always been a little bit in love with my mother: she had always been a little afraid of him... What she feared was his manner, his prickliness and not least his intelligence, for which she felt herself to be no match. Another complication was provided by my father, who went through periods of disliking Waugh intensely - the feeling being entirely mutual - though they made it up in the end."

PROVENANCE: Lady Diana Cooper (presentation inscription, by descent to her son); Viscount Norwich, sold in 1990

Stock ID: 45452