First edition. One of fifty pre-publication copies, printed for the author for distribution amongst his friends. This copy sent to Daphne Fielding with a White's correspondence card inscribed, "With love from Evelyn" pasted on to the front pastedown. Bound in contemporary blue half calf by Bayntun Riviere with contrasting title labels. Top edge gilt, others uncut. A very good copy, the binding a little worn to the upper corners, spine ends and front joint.

The primary issue of Waugh's best known and most successful work. Unlike many of the large paper presentation issues of Waugh's work, the fifty copies of Brideshead form a distinct printing run from the publicly available edition issued the following year.
Waugh wrote Brideshead between February and June 1944, and completed the final corrections whilst posted to Yugoslavia with Randolph Churchill, who helped return the corrected proof in a diplomatic bag. In a letter to his agent A.D.Peters in February 1944 Waugh writes, "Would Littlebrown care to produce an edition de luxe or at least de propriété? I should like this book to be in decent form because it is very good. Failing all else can Garfield get hand-made paper for twenty copies or so at my expense?"
Fifty copies were printed and distributed by the publishers to friends as Christmas presents. Upon return from Yugoslavia, Waugh sought their reaction to the book and was uncharacteristically receptive to making changes. As a result, passages deemed to be too coarse were removed, as were elements open to legal challenge and descriptive passages were rewritten so that the published edition differed in almost every chapter.
Fielding, daughter of the fourth baron Vivian and later a society author, was the archetypal Bright Young Thing. She and Waugh met at Oxford parties in the 1920s, but surviving correspondence suggests that they were acquaintances rather than close friends at that time becoming close friends when Fielding took up writing in the 1950s. Waugh dedicated his 1957 novella, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold to her.

Stock ID: 46291