[Rarebooks] fa: FRED BASON'S DIARY + 2nd DIARY - INSCRIBED to A.E. COPPARD

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, July 12. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/onqyjs8

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Fred Bason: Fred Bason's Diary. [ALONG WITH:] Fred Bason's 2nd Diary. London: Wingate, 1950, 1952. Two volumes, first editions, in dustjackets.

Both volumes elaborately inscribed and signed by the author. The 2nd Diary is inscribed on the dedication page: "This copy is owned by A.E. Coppard Prince of Short Story Writers from that there scallywag Fred Bason…" In addition, Bason has signed the frontispiece photo ("Fred") and, in pencil, inscribed his date of birth on the title-page ("29 August 1907-"). The first Diary is inscribed on the frontispiece portrait (by Ronald Searle), "For John McGrath… a fellow booklover" and boasts an additional lengthy signed inscription on the front free-endpaper. Dustjackets a little dust-soiled and spotted, the first Diary's dj with some short tears to the edges; both volumes with spines a bit cocked; otherwise Very Good. The rear paste-down of the first Diary bears Bason's address label: 152 Westmoreland Road, Walworth, London S.E.17, the home in which he lived and worked for nearly the whole of his life.

Fred Bason (1907-1973), the Cockney bookseller, autograph collector, diarist, bibliographer, columnist, radio personality, boxing aficionado, etc., etc., was a well-known figure on the fringes of the twentieth-century English literary and bibliophilic worlds. Not only did his business dealings bring him into contact with many of the leading London booksellers of his time, but he also forged surprisingly close friendships with the likes of Noel Coward and Nicholas Bentley (both of whom wrote introductions to his Diaries), Arnold Bennett, the critic and fellow diarist James Agate, and most famously, Somerset Maugham. Bason mentions Coppard in the first volume of his Diary, in a discussion of short story writers: "Maugham is Daddy—but there's no doubt that A.E. Coppard is a notable rival."