First edition, large paper issue, number 41 of 250 copies on mould made paper. AUthor's presentation copy, inscribed by Waugh to Graham Greene under the limitation statement, "Mr Grahame Greene's copy", signed by author and illustrator. Original olive buckram with gilt lettering on the spine. Top edge gilt, all others uncut. Housed in a green chemise and quarter morocco slipcase. Title page in black and sepia. Decorative initials and seven full page woodcuts in sepia by Stuart Boyle. A near fine copy with minor bumping to the spine ends.

An exceptional association copy between two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Waugh and Greene were contemporaries at Oxford though not friends at the time. They became acquainted around 1937 when Greene was editor of Night and Day and Waugh a contributor. Although of differing social and political outlooks, they became ardent admirers of one another's work. Of The Heart of The Matter, published shortly after this inscription, Waugh, normally a waspish reviewer wrote, "...of Mr Graham Greene alone among contemporary writers one can say without affectation that his breaking silence with a new serious novel is a literary event... [He] is a story-teller of genius."
Both were late converts to Catholicism and both viewed their faith from different standpoints. Eventually mutual admiration grew to mutual affection. Greene wrote, shortly after Waugh's death in 1966,
"But those who have built Evelyn up as a sort of sacred monster have left out the other side: they have ignored the man who gave up from work which was essential to him to stay with the dying and no longer amusing Ronald Knox in the kind of hotel and the kind of resort he hated, who attended the deathbed of his friend Alfred Duggan and against all obstacles brought him the help he needed. When I come to die, I shall wish he [Waugh] were beside me, for he would give me no easy comfort. Our politics were a hundred miles apart and he regarded my Catholicism as heretical. What indeed had made us friends? He wrote to me in October 1952, 'I am just completing my forty-ninth year. You are just beginning yours. It is the grand climacteric which sets the course of the rest of one's life, I am told. It has been a year of lost friends for me. Not by death but by wear and tear. Our friendship started rather late. Pray God it lasts.' It did." (The Ways of Escape)
Waugh's satirical take on American society, the British ex-pat community, and the film industry. In a letter to Randolph Churchill, Waugh wrote, "Give my love to any friends you see in USA. There will be none after the publication of The Loved One."

PROVENANCE: Grahame Greene (1904-1991, presentation inscription from the author).

Stock ID: 44361