First edition, limited issue. Number 25 of just 50 copies (from a total printing of 350) reserved for presentation by the author. Original red cloth, decoration to upper board and titles to spine gilt. Top edge gilt others untrimmed. Author's presentation copy to novelist Anthony Powell, inscribed on the limitation page, "For Tony with great & growing admiration from Evelyn". Powell's bookplate to the front pastedown. With Decorations by Various Eminent Hands Including the Author's. A fine copy with some fading to the spine.

An exceptional association linking two of the great novelists of the twentieth century.
"Although two years behind him at Oxford, Powell had seen just enough of Waugh to recognise that he was bound to make his mark in the world somehow. They met again in 1927... Powell warmed to Waugh, whose self confidence had not been dented by the many setbacks he had experienced since leaving Oxford." (Michael Barber - Anthony Powell A Life)
It was through his friendship with Powell, that Waugh found his first publisher in Duckworth where Powell worked at the time. Duckworth famously declined to publish Waugh's first novel, Decline & Fall, but remained Waugh's publishers choice for his travel writings. The break up of Waugh's marriage involving Powell's raffish friend John Heygate caused relations between Waugh and Powell to temporarily cool, but both kept up a regular correspondence and common interests saw to it that their lives intertwined for the remainder of Waugh's life. In particular, a mutual support, born of respect for each other's work, remained constant between the two. Upon Waugh's death in 1966, Powell wrote, "his going means that a chunk of my own life has gone too."

PROVENANCE: From the library of Anthony Powell, bookplate on pastedown.

Stock ID: 34098