KITCHIN, C. H. B.. Streamers Waving.. London: Hogarth Press, 1925, 1925.

Price: US$608.41 + shipping

Description: First edition, first impression, of the author's debut, and a Hogarth Press rarity. This copy has the illustrated bookplate of collector and comedian Barry Humphries. Woolmer notes that the print-run was 1,000 copies, with the Sussex ledger showing 412 sold by 18 January 1926. We can find no appearances listed in auction records. In his novel Crime at Christmas (1935), Kitchin wrote: "'It is my fate, in Bloomsbury, to be thought a Philistine, while in other circles I am regarded as a dilettante with too keen an aesthetic sense to be a responsible person.' This sentence, Mr Kitchin confirmed in a letter (5 July 1965), 'has certainly an autobiographical overtone and largely sums up my social situation during the twenties. I was introduced to Bloomsbury by Philip Ritchie, who was a close friend of mine, and met most of the leading lights in that circle, but being in those days a tiresome mixture of shyness and conceit, I never felt sufficiently at home in it to form intimate contacts with its members. Strange to say, Virginia Woolf, the most formidable of them all, developed, I think, a slightly protective attitude towards me and it was thanks to her good offices that the Hogarth Press published my first two novels, Streamers Waving and Mr Balcony. I doubt if any other publishers would have considered them at that time.' Kitchin's reputation as a writer was made with his third book, Death of My Aunt" (Holroyd). Woolmer 68. Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: The New Biography, 2015. Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Sunning to spine, otherwise and excellent copy.

Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom