Scarce with the wrapper

Trefusis, Violet & Jullian, Philippe (Illus.) ~ Don’t Look Round

First UK Printing : Hutchinson & Co., London: 1952

First UK Printing published by Hutchinson & Co., London in 1952. Large 8vo., brown cloth lettered in gilt to spine; with small device gilt to head, as well as upper board; in the unclipped pictorial dust wrapper designed by Philippe Jullian (16s net); as well as decorative endpapers, title, and numerous line drawings in text; frontis photograph of the author with her mother; including author’s family tree and facsimile signature beneath preface; THE BOOK an excellent near Fine copy, lightly bumped to spine ends, with previous ownership signature in blue ink to half-title; in the Very Good++ WRAPPER which has a couple of corner creases, nicks, and small closed tears to extremities; rubbed with minor losses to the edges. Scarce, nonetheless, in such condition, with the striking wrapper artwork retaining its brightness. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition of Violet Trefusis’ autobiography, in which she covers a life from ‘the first thing I remember’, through her Edwardian upbringing as the daughter of Alice Keppel (mistress of King Edward VII), her entry into Parisian aristocratic and literary circles, her interactions with Cocteau and Proust, her return to England during the war, and ending with her mother’s death in 1947, though it omits entirely her relationship with Vita Sackville-West - despite being read and edited by Vita in Florence prior to publication. In the introduction, Trefusis writes: 'I have not lied, I have merely omitted, by-passed the truth, whenever unpalatable'. Written in the aftermath of the Second World War, and in the vacuum of both her parent’s deaths, the work remains an insightful literary and social portrait of Europe between the wars, and is wonderfully offset by Jullian’s charming illustrations. Scarce.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good++