WAUGH, Evelyn.. Labels. A Mediterranean Journal.. London Duckworth, 1930.

Price: US$2722.50 + shipping

Description: First edition, number 13 of 110 copies, signed by the author, with original manuscript leaf bound in; 8vo; illustrated frontispiece after a drawing by Waugh, photographic plates, decorative pictorial endpapers; publisher's blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine, top edge gilt, extremities soiled, spine darkened, housed in modern black quarter morocco clamshell box. Number 13 of 110 copies, signed by the author. With an original manuscript leaf bound in, comprising 17 lines, with deletions and revisions, on one page of lined paper, small oblong 4to size, folded. The text corresponds to text printed at pages 184, 185 and 186 in the accompanying work.

Seller: Shapero Rare Books, London, United Kingdom

WAUGH Evelyn. Labels. A Mediterranean Journal. , 1930.

Price: US$3219.09 + shipping

Description: First edition. Large 8vo., original blue cloth, t.e.g., decorated endpapers. London, Duckworth. Number 49 of 110 numbered copies signed by the author, with a page of the original holograph manuscript tipped-in. Spine slightly faded and marked, and with some variable browning to the upper and lower covers, otherwise an excellent copy. Labels is Waugh's first travel book, the fruit of a difficult season in the Mediterranean for the recently married Waughs, especially since She-Evelyn fell seriously ill with pneumonia and was on the point of death in Port Said. As Martin Stannard writes, with characteristic understatement: ?Some of the romantic enthusiasm which had led her into an impetuous marriage had inevitably died during that trip? and within a couple of months of their return she had fallen in love with John Heygate and the marriage was effectively over. Waugh wrote her out of the text under her own identity, instead turning themselves into a fictional couple called Geoffrey and Juliet, and the American edition was published as A Bachelor Abroad. The book is largely a pot-boiler travelogue but is not without moments of genius: the chapter on the cultural history of sunrise in Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory quotes Waugh on ? the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountain almost invisible in a blur of pastel grey, glowing on the top and then repeating its shape, as though reflected, in a wisp of grey smoke, with the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky. Nothing I have ever seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting.? The special copies were issued with a leaf of Waugh's manuscript to increase their collectability, and the present copy has the amusing and very Waughvian episode where a ?beautiful and splendidly dressed Englishwoman? launches wave after wave of flattery upon him, flattery that of course was aimed at his elder brother Alec. ?Then she said to me, ?You know, I am psychic. The moment I came into this room to-night I knew that there was a great personality here, and I knew that I should find him before the evening was over.? I suppose that real novelists get used to this kind of thing. It was new to me and very nice. I had only written two very dim books and still regarded myself less as a writer than an out-of-work private schoolmaster.?

Seller: Maggs Bros. Ltd ABA, ILAB, PBFA, BA, London, United Kingdom

WAUGH, Evelyn.. Labels: A Mediterranean Journal.. London Duckworth, 1930.

Price: US$4235.00 + shipping

Description: First edition, signed by the author, number 7 of 110 copies, with a page of the original manuscript tipped in; 8vo; illustrated frontispiece after a drawing by Waugh, photographic plates, decorated endpapers, endpapers with tape marks; publisher's light blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, an unusually fine copy of a scarce item. With an autograph manuscript in Waugh's hand, comprising 17 lines, with deletions and revisions, on one page of lined paper, small oblong 4to size, folded. The text corresponds to text printed at pages 36 and 37 in the accompanying work.

Seller: Shapero Rare Books, London, United Kingdom

Waugh, Evelyn. Labels a Mediterranean Journey. Duckworth, London, 1930.

Price: US$4500.00 + shipping

Condition: Fine

Description: SIGNED LIMITED EDITION of 110 copies with the ORIGINAL Manuscript present. This copy is authentically SIGNED by Evelyn Waugh on the limitation page. A beautiful copy. The book is excellent shape. The binding is tight with NO cocking or leaning and the boards are crisp. The pages are exceptionally clean with NO writing, marks or bookplates in the book. A superb copy SIGNED by the author. We buy SIGNED Evelyn Waugh First Editions.

Seller: Magnum Opus Rare Books, Missoula, MT, U.S.A.

WAUGH, Evelyn.. Labels. A Mediterranean Journal.. [London]: Duckworth, 1930, 1930.

Price: US$6438.19 + shipping

Description: First edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Tom from Evelyn, his worst book". The recipient was Thomas Balston, the partner at Duckworth who had seen Waugh's early potential, given him a £50 advance on his biography of Rossetti, and been away from the office when Waugh came in to offer his first novel, Decline and Fall. Waugh's brother later recalled that because of Balston's sharp eye, "Duckworth got not only the book on Rossetti, but all of Evelyn's subsequent travel books. They would have got his novels too, had not Duckworth in Balston's absence been scared of the audacities of Decline and Fall", which was instead published by Chapman and Hall in 1928. There were also suggestions that Gerald Duckworth refused the book because of his friendship with Lady Burghclere, the disapproving mother of Waugh's new wife. Waugh later presented a copy of Decline and Fall to Balston inscribed "To Tom Balston - the stone that the Builder rejected". Labels came about because Waugh was under contract to write a travel book for Duckworth about his belated honeymoon cruise with Lady Burghclere's daughter, also named Evelyn. The holiday was not a success. His wife had been ill before they set off, and travelling the Mediterranean worsened her condition. Waugh wrote to Harold Acton from Port Said, where Evelyn was bedridden with pneumonia: "At last she is out of danger. Meanwhile of course our trip is broken, we shall be here for a month, & all my work at a standstill. I hope now things are easier to start on a new novel. In spite of all reports this is an intolerably dull town". They returned to Britain, where Waugh duly submitted his book and, after the sudden collapse of their marriage in July 1930, filed for divorce in September 1930, the month of publication. Labels is written as if he had been alone on the cruise, and was re-titled A Bachelor Abroad in the American edition. Alec Waugh, "My Brother Evelyn", The Atlantic, June 1967. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Book Society sticker on front panel. Spine sunned, ends gently bumped, a near-fine copy in like jacket, toned spine, three short closed tears at top edge, one corner just chipped, a few creases, very fresh.

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