Evelyn Waugh – Edmund Campion – First Edition – Lady Juliet Duff’s Personal Copy

evelyn waugh edmund campion first edition1

Evelyn Waugh – Edmund Campion – First Edition – Lady Juliet Duff’s Personal Copy

£4,000.00

Out of stock

£4,000.00

A first edition, first printing published by Longmans, Green & Co, London in 1935. Octavo. Original red cloth gilt. Top edge red. Glassine wrapper. Slipcase. A near fine copy, square and firm binding. Occasional light foxing to the pages. Two minor faint marks to the cloth to the rear panel. Cloth bright and with none of the usual fading to the spine. Some light damage to the edge of the buff slipcase. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION OF WHICH THIS IS NUMBER 33. PRESENTATION COPY TO LADY JULIET DUFF SIGNED BY EVELYN WAUGH: ‘JULIET, WITH LOVE FROM EVELYN’. ALSO MARKED ‘LADY JULIET DUFF’S COPY’ IN PENCIL TO THE FRONT FREE ENDPAPER WITH HER BOOKPLATE TO THE FRONT PASTEDOWN.

Arguably one of the finest and inspiring biographies written giving an account of some of the darkest days in British history. Waugh relates the life of Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest working underground in the late-16th Century in Protestant England during the reign of Elizabeth I. Found guilty of treason whilst on a secret mission in England, Campion was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1581. Campion’s life and work had a profound effect on Waugh who revered him as a poet, scholar, traveller, hero and martyr. Indeed, Waugh himself had converted to Catholicism in 1930 and this biography celebrates Campion’s time spent up at Oxford, his European travels, his undercover work in England and his ultimate capture, celebrated trial and death. Campion would be beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII and was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. No mere religious biography, Waugh’s graceful prose and his accomplished historical scholarship illuminate the life and spirit of this great saint. Waugh would write of him, ‘the hunted, trapped, murdered priest is our contemporary and Campion’s voice sounds to us across the centuries‘.

Lady Juliet Duff (nee Lowther) was the daughter of the 4th Earl of Lonsdale. In 1903 she married Sir Robin Duff who was killed in action in 1914. She became a patron of the arts, particularly ballet, and counted Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Cecil Beaton and many of the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s amongst her great friends.


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Description

A first edition, first printing published by Longmans, Green & Co, London in 1935. Octavo. Original red cloth gilt. Top edge red. Glassine wrapper. Slipcase. A near fine copy, square and firm binding. Occasional light foxing to the pages. Two minor faint marks to the cloth to the rear panel. Cloth bright and with none of the usual fading to the spine. Some light damage to the edge of the buff slipcase. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION OF WHICH THIS IS NUMBER 33. PRESENTATION COPY TO LADY JULIET DUFF SIGNED BY EVELYN WAUGH: ‘JULIET, WITH LOVE FROM EVELYN’. ALSO MARKED ‘LADY JULIET DUFF’S COPY’ IN PENCIL TO THE FRONT FREE ENDPAPER WITH HER BOOKPLATE TO THE FRONT PASTEDOWN.

Arguably one of the finest and inspiring biographies written giving an account of some of the darkest days in British history. Waugh relates the life of Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest working underground in the late-16th Century in Protestant England during the reign of Elizabeth I. Found guilty of treason whilst on a secret mission in England, Campion was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1581. Campion’s life and work had a profound effect on Waugh who revered him as a poet, scholar, traveller, hero and martyr. Indeed, Waugh himself had converted to Catholicism in 1930 and this biography celebrates Campion’s time spent up at Oxford, his European travels, his undercover work in England and his ultimate capture, celebrated trial and death. Campion would be beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII and was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. No mere religious biography, Waugh’s graceful prose and his accomplished historical scholarship illuminate the life and spirit of this great saint. Waugh would write of him, ‘the hunted, trapped, murdered priest is our contemporary and Campion’s voice sounds to us across the centuries‘.

Lady Juliet Duff (nee Lowther) was the daughter of the 4th Earl of Lonsdale. In 1903 she married Sir Robin Duff who was killed in action in 1914. She became a patron of the arts, particularly ballet, and counted Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Cecil Beaton and many of the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s amongst her great friends.