NICOLSON, SIR HAROLD; NIGEL NICOLSON (ED) — Harold Nicolson: Diaries & Letters 1930-1939
NY: Atheneum, 1966. 1st American Edition (stated). First Printing. Hard Cover. Publisher's full light blue cloth, gilt lettering on spine, silver lettering on cover, top edge red, olive endpapers. Illustrated with B&W photographs. NB: Sir Harold Nicolson (born 1886, Tehran, Iran—died 1968, Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, England) was a British diplomat and author of more than 125 books, including political essays, travel accounts, and mystery novels. His three-volume Diaries and Letters (1966–68) is a valuable document of British social and political life from 1930 to 1964. Nicolson was born in Iran, where his father, Sir Arthur Nicolson (later 1st Baron Carnock of Carnock), was chargé d’affaires. Throughout his youth, his family moved about from diplomatic post to post, in central Europe, Turkey, Madrid, and Russia. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford (receiving a “pass degree” in 1907; he received a B.A. and M.A. in 1930). He entered the Foreign Office in 1909, with which he remained for 20 years, serving at such overseas posts as Madrid, Tehran, and Berlin. In 1929 Nicolson decided to abandon his diplomatic career. He had already published several biographies: Paul Verlaine (1921), Tennyson (1923), Byron, the Last Journey (1924), Swinburne (1926), and Some People (1927), as well as a novel and other pieces. On January 1, 1930, he became a columnist for Lord Beaverbrook’s London Evening Standard and also, on that day, began a diary, in which he made daily entries until October 4, 1964. (Three volumes, of which this is the first, were edited and published by his son Nigel Nicolson in the 1960s.). The volume is in excellent condition, unmarked, seemingly unread, tight, square, and clean. The unclipped ($7.50) dust jacket is lightly sunned and has several small tears along the edges and at the corners, else fine. FINE/VERY GOOD.. Harold Nicolson Diaries & Letters. 1. B&W Photographs. Small 4to 9" - 11" tall. 448 pages. Fine in Very Good dust jacket .
