Cakes and Ale; or the Skeleton in the Cupboard

William Heinemann, 1930. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Original blue cloth stamped in gilt (has slight fading and wear; slight browning to edges). PROVENANCE: With bookplate of Robert A. Bevan, which the British Museum ascribed to Ethelbert White. 'The print is not catalogued in either of Hilary Chapman's catalogues of White's prints. However, the signature style seems to date it to the early period of White's career, around the early 1920s; White also made another wood-engraved bookplate c. 1926; see Hilary Chapman, 'Ethelbert White, 1891-1972: painter, printmaker: with a catalogue of the wood engravings' (Bicester, 2003), cat. no. 38 (information from Hilary Chapman). The bull features in the Bevan coat of arms (information from Patrick Baty). Shorthorn cattle were bred at Boxted Hall, Essex, where R A Bevan lived; see Janet Cooper (ed.), 'A History of the County of Essex': X, Lexden Hundred (Part) including Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe (2001), pp. 62-64 for 'Boxted: Economic History'. White was a close friend of Bevan's parents, Robert Polhill Bevan and Stanislawa de Karlowska (information from Frances Stenlake)' (British Museum). Bevan was a prominent ad man (once described as 'the personification of the greatest days of English advertising'). He was the son of Camden School painter Robert P. Bevan, He was behind slogans such as 'Guinness is Good for You' and was the inspiration for Mr Ingleby in Dorothy L. Sayers' 1933 thriller Murder Must Advertise. The book is the 2nd state (p. 147 corrected).