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Decline and Fall

Lot 106
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 20 160
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1016397
Lot 106 | Decline and Fall
Estimate value
£ 15 000 – 25 000
Decline and Fall

Evelyn Waugh

WAUGH, Evelyn (1903-1966). Decline and Fall. An illustrated novelette. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1928.



First edition, first issue of the author’s first novel in the original dust-jacket. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author to Oscar Wilde’s son Vyvyan Holland ‘for Vyvyan with best wishes from Evelyn’. Waugh met Vyvyan Holland shortly after the publication of Decline and Fall, when Waugh was attempting to repair his marriage. The event is recorded in Selina Hasting's biography of Waugh: ‘Evelyn accompanied his wife to the parties she so loved including a “tropical” party given by Oscar Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, where the Bystander flashlighted them looking startled and ill at ease in their safari kit.’ (Selina Hastings, Evelyn Waugh, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994).



Both Evelyn Waugh and Vyvyan Holland had had to deal with the consequences of homosexual scandal in their families: Waugh with his brother Alec who was forced to withdraw from Sherbourne School under a cloud at the age of seventeen, the episode providing the basis for Alec Waugh’s infamous semi-autobiographical novel The Loom of Youth, and Holland due to his father's most famous of public cases.



The publication of Decline and Fall is one of mythic twists of fate. Duckworth, which had published Waugh's biography of Rossetti, rejected the book on grounds of ‘indelicacy’. Waugh proceeded to offer the manuscript to Chapman & Hall, in the absence of his father who was the managing director of the firm but was away on holiday. The acting-director agreed to publish the novel, without enforcing any of the emendations demanded by Duckworth. Arthur Waugh returned to London to discover that his son was his firm's newest author. When Arthur Waugh's biography was published three years later, however, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, the two novels published under his directorship of Chapman & Hall, were not mentioned. The indelicate material, which Martin Stannard has since revealed in fact did go through some ‘taming’ revisions, was perhaps a bit too much for the elder Waugh. This is the first edition of the author’s first novel, the first issue with ‘Martin Gaythorn-Brodie’ and ‘Kevin Saunderson’ on pages 168 and 169 respectively. Connolly, The Modern Movement 58 (‘Decline and Fall .. is surely one of the wittiest and most original of first novels’); Davis 4.



Octavo. Half title, frontispiece and 5 full-page illustrations by Evelyn Waugh. (A few light spots at lower edges, very minor red ink stain from binding on front endpapers). Original marbled-effect cloth, spine lettered in gilt; original green pictorial dust-jacket with label printed in red on upper wrapper (spine of jacket and edges slightly sunned, tiny chips to ends of backstrip, tear along one fold, small light stain on lower wrapper); housed in a modern black quarter morocco solander box. Provenance: Vyvyan Holland (1886-1967, son of Oscar Wilde; presentation inscription on front free endpaper from the author) – Roger Rechler, his sale, Christie’s New York, 11 October 2002, lot 310.

Artist:Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966)
Place of origin:Northern Europe, Europe, United Kingdom
Auction house category:Printed books
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
28.09.2023 – 28.09.2023
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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