giles esmond romilly (2 Ergebnisse)

Zustand: Fair. 1935. First Edition. 309 pages. No dust jacket. Blue cloth with silver lettering to spine. With photographic frontispiece. Includes ex libris plate of Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, to front pastedown. Pages are moderately tanned and thumbed at the edges, with moderate foxing. Hinges are cracked, with some exposed netting and a loose binding. Frontis loosening. Occasional slight pencil marginalia. Text block edges moderately water stained. Boards are a little rub worn with slight shelf wear to corners, spine and edges. Corners are a little bumped. Spine ends are mildly crushed, with small splits and chips. Pronounced tanning to spine and edges. Boards are slightly bowed. Book has a notable forward lean. Water and ring marks to boards and spine. Silver lettering dulled and worn.

FIRST EDITION, frontispiece photograph of the authors, some light foxing, pp. 310, crown 8vo, original blue cloth, backstrip lettered in silver and lightly sunned through the jacket, lean to spine, spots to edges, dustjacket with cancel flaps (as issued), design to front and backstrip panels by J.L. Carstairs, a little chipped and nicked at extremities with some light soiling and a few spots to rear panel, very good. An account of a firebrand adolescence, written whilst both authors were still in their teens, detailing their battle with the public school system - as represented in their case by Wellington College, 'where they became allies in a rebellion against the militaristic and conservative values' (ODNB). Experiencing an awakening to left-wing politics quite at odds with the upbringing and education, they set about a programme of activism that included inserting pacifist leaflets inside the hymn-books at the school's Armistice Day service, and launching a magazine with the same title as the present account - the furore provoked by which (the Daily Mail alerted its readers to the 'Red Menace in Public Schools') led to Esmond absconding, before a brief return to the education system at the co-educational Bedales, following which they launched their literary careers with this 'precocious and unexpectedly even-tempered' work (ODNB). Both brothers continued their communist activity by joining the International Brigades to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, with Esmond there marrying Jessica Mitford - a cause for further controversy. During the Second World War, Giles, working as a war correspondent in Scandinavia, was imprisoned at Colditz; Esmond, meanwhile, had also worked as a journalist, in the US, but returned to England and disappeared whilst on service as a navigator on a flight destined for a raid on Hamburg.