HELENA - Signed First Edition

Blue publisher’s cloth, small dent at the top of the front board; uniformly deep blue cloth, sharp corners. In a near very good jacket, lightly nicked at head of the spine and at the top of the front hinge with the front flap. Price sticker for ‘10/6 net’ increasing the original printed price on the front jacket flap. Evelyn Waugh has signed the title page below his printed name. Text is clean and fresh, a small ink mark at the tail of p141.

In the preface Waugh writes of this novel that a ‘reader may reasonably inquire: how much is true? The Age of Constantine is strangely obscure. Most of the dates and hard facts, confidently given in the encyclopedia, soften and dissolve on examination. The life of St. Helena begins and ends in surmise and legend. The story is just something to be read; in fact a legend.’ Waugh recounts his legend quite beautifully.