[Rarebooks] fa: NORMAN DOUGLAS - LOOKING BACK - First/Limited Edition SIGNED - 1933

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending MONDAY, November 2. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y56kr9zj

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Norman Douglas: Looking Back: An Autobiographical Excursion. London: Chatto and Windus, 1933. FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, tall 8vo (24 cm), in original quarter buckram and bevel-edged patterned boards, top page edges gilt; with 4 photographic plates in each volume.
One of an edition of 535 copies SIGNED by the author, of which 500 were for sale, this being no. 501, making it the first hors de commerce copy. Bindings with wear to the corners, some sunning to the spines; text blocks with mild toning to the fore-edges, else clean and sound, firmly bound.

Recollections of the novelist and travel writer Norman Douglas (1868-1952). Aggrieved in tone, bitchy and score-settling, but highly entertaining. A rather louche literary figure, Douglas began his career in the Foreign Office, but after several sexual scandals, one involving a pregnant mistress and at least two involving underage boys, he went into self-imposed exile in Italy, eventually taking up semi-permanent residence on the island of Capri, the Emperor Tiberius's old stomping grounds, a suitable haven for a man described as "depraved" and "pagan-to-the-core." He is best (if at all) remembered today for his novel South Wind (1917) and for his travel writings on Italy.