BENSON, Theodora. Chip, Chip, My Little Horse. The Story of an Air-Holiday. London: Lovat Dickson. 1934. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in red gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by John French. A very good copy. The cloth clean, very mild marks to backstrip, tips slightly pushed. Some spots to textblock edges, sporadic mild foxing throughout, often fine. With contemporary ink gift inscription to front endpaper. The dust jacket unclipped (7s 6d net), some mild rubbing and tiny chips to spine tips, corners, and joints, but a most pleasing copy.
The first work of non-fiction by the fashionably flippant author, whose earlier novels gained considerable praise for their comedic jauntiness and literary experimentalism—she wrote three novels with her close friend, Betty Askwith, and some of her works were illustrated by Nicolas Bentley. Here, Benson travels across much of Europe—from Scandinavia to Bulgaria—by air, a rare and expensive form of luxury travel at the time, with amusing illustrations, or rather, doodles—by the author. She writes idiosyncratically and almost styles herself an airhead—’If there is a riot or a coup d’etat at any place I’m staying I only seem to learn of it five days later’—but she knows what she is doing. Uncommon.
BENSON, Theodora. Chip, Chip, My Little Horse. The Story of an Air-Holiday. London: Lovat Dickson. 1934. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in red gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by John French. A very good copy. The cloth clean, very mild marks to backstrip, tips slightly pushed. Some spots to textblock edges, sporadic mild foxing throughout, often fine. With contemporary ink gift inscription to front endpaper. The dust jacket unclipped (7s 6d net), some mild rubbing and tiny chips to spine tips, corners, and joints, but a most pleasing copy.
The first work of non-fiction by the fashionably flippant author, whose earlier novels gained considerable praise for their comedic jauntiness and literary experimentalism—she wrote three novels with her close friend, Betty Askwith, and some of her works were illustrated by Nicolas Bentley. Here, Benson travels across much of Europe—from Scandinavia to Bulgaria—by air, a rare and expensive form of luxury travel at the time, with amusing illustrations, or rather, doodles—by the author. She writes idiosyncratically and almost styles herself an airhead—’If there is a riot or a coup d’etat at any place I’m staying I only seem to learn of it five days later’—but she knows what she is doing. Uncommon.
