cakes and ale

HARDBACK SHIPPED FROM THE UK* Edition: 1st.* Date of Publication: 1930* Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd.* Binding and cover condition: Dark blue cloth covered boards, bright gilt title to spine & face, black logo to front board. Minimal bumps & rubs, minimal shelf wear to corners and to head and tail of spine. Some slight marks to spine and back board. Boards very slightly dished. VG* Jacket condition: No dust jacket. ND.* Contents condition: PRIVATE COPY NOT EX-LIBRARY. Clean, crisp, tight and bright with no reading wear, no marks to text, very slight marks to end papers, otherwise no visible faults. VG++* Illustrations: None.* Pages: 270 pp. text.* Description: The story is told by a first-person narrator and well-to-do author, William Ashenden, who, at the beginning of the novel is suddenly and unexpectedly contacted by Alroy Kear, a busybody literary figure in London who has been asked by Amy, the second Mrs Driffield, to write the biography of her deceased husband, Edward Driffield. Driffield, once scorned for his realist representation of late-Victorian working-class characters, had in his later years come to be lionised by scholars of English letters. The second Mrs Driffield, a nurse to the ailing Edward after his first wife left him, is known for her propriety, and her interest in augmenting and cementing her husband's literary reputation. Her only identity is that of caretaker of her husband in life and of his reputation in death. The essence of the story is a question. How much information should an authorised biographer disclose to the family about the subjects? previous life?* A NEAR FINE copy with only minor faults reducing it to VG. No dust jacket.*