?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
AUSPICIOUS DEBUT WAUGH, EVELYN. Decline and Fall. Frontispiece and other illustrations by the author. 8vo, original patterned cloth, spine gilt-lettered, one corner lightly bumped else bright and clean, free from rubbing or shelf-wear; dust-jacket, spine panel evenly faded, similarly faded along folds and extreme upper flap edges, still crisp with no chips or tears; internally pristine; housed in custom red cloth drop-back box. London: Chapman & Hall, 1928
first edition of waugh's first novel in entirely unrestored original dust jacket. review copy with publisher's slip laid-in, with rubber-stamped price and September 18 publication date indicated. first issue with "Martin Gaythorne-Brodie" and "Kevin Saunderson" on pages 169-70.
Laid-in is a postcard with Pyt House pictured, in unknown hand dated 1945 (inside later envelope), to Thomas Balston that was included in a collection of Waugh letters in Balston's sale (Christie's, July 1968, lot 303), with note in same hand on envelope stating "Tony Powell says that there is no truth in the suggestion that Pytt House was the original of the house in Decline and Fall." "Anarchic and experimental, surely one of the wittiest and most original of first novels." A superior copy. Connolly 99.
