JOHN HEYGATE. Henry Williamson. — Decent Fellows. A novel.

Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, New York, 1st Edition, First American Edition (first printing), issued a year after the UK edition, which is principally only found in paperback format. 8vo. vii, 400pp. Green cloth lettered and ornately ruled in black at the spine and with the publisher's light orange top edge stain. A slight ridge to the cloth at one corner of the upper board, and two tiny indentations. A tiny area of staining to the top edge, and a touch of bruising to the head of the backstrip. Former owner bookplate to the front pastedown. A very good copy, in fine state internally, and housed in the uncommon dust wrapper, which is non-price-clipped but with several tiny fractions of loss from the spine panel ends and from several corner tips, and with a centimetre of surface abrasion to the front panel. The author's first book, a scathing attack on his alma mater, Eton College, with a printed dedication to his friend Henry Williamson. Williamson's bibliographer notes a foreword by Williamson: "Introduction by HW (pp.xi-xxii) written in rebuttal of critics of the first UK edition". The blurb on the wrapper flap also notes a 'foreword' by Williamson, but his contribution is not present, nor are pages xi-xxii, and there is no indication that these leaves were ever in situ. Williamson's introduction certainly exists however and was collected in the John Gregory-edited collection 'Threnos for T E Lawrence and Other Writings'. In that collection Gregory notes "Rather curiously the introduction was used in only part of the print run - perhaps to stimulate initially slow sales?", which suggests that this might be an early first state of the first edition. Most uncommon., Very Good, Very Good