POPE-HENNESSY, James. London Fabric. London: Batsford. 1939. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the marvellous dust jacket inimitably designed by Eric Ravilious. With a colour frontispiece and 52 illustrations. An about very good example, the cloth mostly clean, the extremities just slightly faded, the binding tight and perhaps gently rolled, the topstain fairly vivid. The textblock edges quite consistently spotted, but the contents largely very clean; some spots to prelims, illustrated endpapers toned, else clean. The dust jacket unclipped (10s 6d net), with several small nicks and chips to the spine tips and some corners, mild fading to the spine. Nevertheless a very presentable example, uncommon as the first printing.
Poor James Pope-Hennessy remains largely ignored despite living a life as a genuine enigma for half of the twentieth century. Learning the trade as book editor and ‘professional’ writer without taking a degree, he quickly got to work on this, his first book, an atmospheric portrait of London old and new, written on the cusp of the outbreak of war and with the future of this landscape wholly threatened. It won the Hawthornden Prize. He rubbed shoulders with James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson, and Cecil Beaton, and though privately homosexual, his enigmatic conversational skills had many female socialites seeking him out for chinwags and more. Acclaimed biographies of Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Queens Mary and Victoria, Noel Coward, &c followed, but beneath this veneer was a ravaged mind, at the drink and knowing all too well how to spend coin. He wound up, ever more incredibly, murdered by an acquaintance in his London flat. The Ravilious jacket in this first impression sells itself, of course, but forget not Pope-Hennessy’s fascinating Shakespearean story.
POPE-HENNESSY, James. London Fabric. London: Batsford. 1939. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the marvellous dust jacket inimitably designed by Eric Ravilious. With a colour frontispiece and 52 illustrations. An about very good example, the cloth mostly clean, the extremities just slightly faded, the binding tight and perhaps gently rolled, the topstain fairly vivid. The textblock edges quite consistently spotted, but the contents largely very clean; some spots to prelims, illustrated endpapers toned, else clean. The dust jacket unclipped (10s 6d net), with several small nicks and chips to the spine tips and some corners, mild fading to the spine. Nevertheless a very presentable example, uncommon as the first printing.
Poor James Pope-Hennessy remains largely ignored despite living a life as a genuine enigma for half of the twentieth century. Learning the trade as book editor and ‘professional’ writer without taking a degree, he quickly got to work on this, his first book, an atmospheric portrait of London old and new, written on the cusp of the outbreak of war and with the future of this landscape wholly threatened. It won the Hawthornden Prize. He rubbed shoulders with James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson, and Cecil Beaton, and though privately homosexual, his enigmatic conversational skills had many female socialites seeking him out for chinwags and more. Acclaimed biographies of Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Queens Mary and Victoria, Noel Coward, &c followed, but beneath this veneer was a ravaged mind, at the drink and knowing all too well how to spend coin. He wound up, ever more incredibly, murdered by an acquaintance in his London flat. The Ravilious jacket in this first impression sells itself, of course, but forget not Pope-Hennessy’s fascinating Shakespearean story.
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