PRESENTATION COPY TO THE WIDOW OF ONE OF THE BOOK’S WRITERS County of London Plan Prepared for the London County Council

Presentation copy of the 2nd impression lavishly inscribed to Patricia Dougill, recent and sudden widow of the architect Wesley Dougill, who led the Planning Group that helped prepare this report who died shortly before its publication. Both authors have signed the title page and tipped onto the title there is a most affectionate letter from Patrick Abercrombie - ‘nothing we could say or do could express our loss.... And we were always planning things to do after the war.’ Two further letters of condolence from London County Council members and a remarkable letter from February 1943 signed by 30 colleagues at County Hall are laid in. On the verso of the first flyleaf is tipped in a ‘Fantasy’ architectural drawing by Dougill himself. His widow Patricia Dougill has inscribed the book on the recto of the frontispiece.

The binding is in good condition only with mottled light green boards and cracking to the paper over the inner hinges. The contents of the book are clean and complete. Only the upper panel of the jacket survives. Provenance: from the estate of Wesley & Patricia Dougill’s daughter.

Wesley Dougill, 1893-1943, studied architecture at Liverpool University, won the Special Prix de Rome, teaching and working as an architect at Liverpool University under his co-author here Patrick Abercrombie before being seconded to the architect’s department at London County Council to undertake preparatory work for the post-war reconstruction of London, an undertaking he did not live to see.