1928 Decline and Fall

Description

First Edition, Publishers' Original Binding

First edition, first impression, first state, with "Martin Gaythorne-Brodie" and "Kevin Saunderson" unchanged on pages 168 and 169.

In the original characteristic red snakeskin-like cloth.

'Decline and Fall' is Waugh's first published novel, partly based on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College and Hertford College, Oxford.

As is typical for Waugh, this is a satirical novel, lampooning British society in the 1920s.

Illustrated with a frontispiece, and five plates. Collated, complete.

Written by Evelyn Waugh, a member of the Bright Young Things group of the 1920s.

Pencil inscription of Joyce Gill to the recto of the front endpaper. Joyce Gill was a life-long friend of Evelyn Waugh. Joyce and Evelyn had a passionate affair during the annulment of Evelyn’s first marriage to ‘She-Evelyn’. The pair were introduced sometime around Christmas in 1923 at a nightclub in Fitzrovia, their affair seeming to come to a head in the summer of 1935, when Evelyn invited Joyce to leave her husband and join him on his travels to Abyssinia.

Portrait of the author tipped-in the half-title.