Books

First edition. Second state binding: cloth-backed boards with label on spine. Octavo. 419 pages. Foreword by Sherwood Anderson.Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the front free endpaper: ''To Gerald and hand in hand we enjoy it all together altogether - with so much affection - Gertrude''. The recipient is Lord Berners (1883-1950) the British aesthete, composer, writer and wit, whose home Faringdon House was frequented by a wide range of artistic luminaries, including Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Igor Stravinsky, Oliver Messel, Cecil Beaton, the Mitfords, H.G. Wells, Tom Driberg, the Sitwells, Constant Lambert, William Walton and many others. Stein and Berners collaborated on the 1937 ballet, A Wedding Bouquet, based on a text by the former and set to music by the latter; the choreography was by Frederick Ashton. A later collaboration, on an opera based on Stein's libretto Dr Faustus Lights the Lights, was abandoned as Berners sank into a period of depression. This has not prevented the libretto in recent years from being set to music and performed by various American experimental theatre groups.Bottom corners of covers a but bumped and rubbed. Very good in torn, rubbed and defective dustwrapper.