In the scarce dustwrapper by portrait artist Vasco Lazzolo.

DESCAVES, Pierre & Etienne GRIL [Bernard MIALL, Trans.] ~ Hans the Gravedigger.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Noel Douglas, London: 1932.

8vo., green publisher's boards, lettered in gilt to spine with publisher's device to foot; upper edge stained green; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (6s. net) featuring an image in black, white and red by Vasco Lazzolo; THE BOOK a very good example, a touch bumped to foot of spine with a couple of small marks to covers; internally a very clean copy, with some light spotting to the fore-edge once or twice extending to the outer margins of the text block; THE WRAPPER good, seldom found in such condition, with some dampstaining to the panels, spine and outer edges; a little rubbed and nicked at extremities, with some minor chipping to the ends of spine and folds; a couple of short closed tears to the lower panel (longest 2cm in length); evidence of tape repair to the verso. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, first printing, with slip from publishers Williams & Norgate Ltd. loosely inserted. The first English edition, translated from the French by Bernard Miall. A scarce neo-gothic work concerning a glum gravedigger who works at a prison for political prisoners in an old Bavarian castle. The plot focuses on the governor, von Schnurman, a bitter and jealous man who suspects Volker, the leader of the revolutionaries, of being involved with the woman he desires. As relations between the captors and captive revolutionaries become strained, our gravedigger Hans is caught in the middle - with tragic results. The work is accompanied by a wonderfully evocative dust wrapper by the portrait artist Vasco Lazzolo. Little is known about Lazzolo's early life, although research shows that he was just seventeen years old when this jacket was commissioned. After studying at the Liverpool School of Art and the Slade, he began to move in high society, becoming a portrait painter who counted among his acquaintances Cecil Beaton and the Kray twins. He later produced sculptures of the Duke of Edinburgh and Somerset Maugham, as well as portraits for Queen Elizabeth, Stirling Moss, David Mountbatten and many others. One of his most famous paintings documents the 1966 England World Cup win over West Germany. By the age of 48, he had become one of Britain's best known sculptors and Royal painters, though this early example of his work, an imaginative and vivid interpretation of the text, is rare indeed. Very scarce. I can trace no other copies in the dustwrapper in commerce.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Good