HERRING, Robert. The President's Hat. London: Longmans. 1926. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s quarter burgundy cloth over brown boards with white stars, lettered in gilt to spine. In the Cecil Beaton dust jacket. With illustrations by Hubert Williams including frontispiece behind tissue guard. A very good copy. The cloth clean, the boards rubbed at corners, the binding tight and square. Occasional spots to textblock closed edges but the contents clean throughout. The dust jacket is the US version—a common idiosyncrasy with this publisher and volume—with the printed price of $3.50 to the spine panel, which is faded, with several chips, nicks, rubbing and creases across all edges.
The author’s first book, a novel in the form of a travelogue depicting the fictional odyssey of two young chaps in their journey to unseen Andorra. In the Ronald Firbank style—i.e. writing about a place before you set foot there—Herring pokes fun at the obliviously self-centred Englishman on tour; the first chapter a sort of parodic plea of circumvention of any historical, political or cultural inaccuracies therein. Still, it is convincingly told. Herring later edited the Bryher-owned Life and Letters To-day series. A debut for an author never certain a second book would come, Herring dedicated the novel to R. P. K., this being Richard Prescott Keigwin, his influential tutor at Cambridge. Interested in stage and film criticism, Herring befriended the like-minded Cecil Beaton while at Cambridge and, perhaps through Herring or perhaps not, Beaton was afforded his first dust jacket commission with this wonderful design which nods to their shared interests. Uncommon.
HERRING, Robert. The President's Hat. London: Longmans. 1926. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s quarter burgundy cloth over brown boards with white stars, lettered in gilt to spine. In the Cecil Beaton dust jacket. With illustrations by Hubert Williams including frontispiece behind tissue guard. A very good copy. The cloth clean, the boards rubbed at corners, the binding tight and square. Occasional spots to textblock closed edges but the contents clean throughout. The dust jacket is the US version—a common idiosyncrasy with this publisher and volume—with the printed price of $3.50 to the spine panel, which is faded, with several chips, nicks, rubbing and creases across all edges.
The author’s first book, a novel in the form of a travelogue depicting the fictional odyssey of two young chaps in their journey to unseen Andorra. In the Ronald Firbank style—i.e. writing about a place before you set foot there—Herring pokes fun at the obliviously self-centred Englishman on tour; the first chapter a sort of parodic plea of circumvention of any historical, political or cultural inaccuracies therein. Still, it is convincingly told. Herring later edited the Bryher-owned Life and Letters To-day series. A debut for an author never certain a second book would come, Herring dedicated the novel to R. P. K., this being Richard Prescott Keigwin, his influential tutor at Cambridge. Interested in stage and film criticism, Herring befriended the like-minded Cecil Beaton while at Cambridge and, perhaps through Herring or perhaps not, Beaton was afforded his first dust jacket commission with this wonderful design which nods to their shared interests. Uncommon.
