Decline and Fall. by WAUGH, Evelyn - 1928: An Illustrated Novelette.

London: Chapman & Hall Ltd, 1928. First edition of Waugh's remarkable first novel First edition, first impression. The author's remarkable first novel, with his own illustrations, in the dust jacket also designed by him. After the book was rejected for indecency by Duckworth's, the publisher of his earlier biography of Rossetti, Waugh offered the manuscript to Chapman & Hall, but he did so while his father, who was the managing director of the firm, was away on holiday. The acting-director agreed to publish the novel and Arthur Waugh returned to London to discover that his son was his firm's newest author. When Arthur Waugh's biography was published three years later, however, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, the two novels published under his directorship of Chapman & Hall, were not mentioned. The indelicate material, which Martin Stannard has since revealed in fact did go through some "taming" revisions, was perhaps too much for the elder Waugh. Octavo. Original red and black "snakeskin" cloth, titles to spine gilt. With dust jacket. Frontispiece and 4 illustrations in the text, all by Evelyn Waugh. Ownership inscription to front free endpaper. Spine gently rolled, slight rubbing to extremities, top edge dust toned, small mark to foot of spine; a very good copy in the jacket with browned spine and panel edges, minor loss to head of spine, chips to extremities, a little cracking to creases. Connolly, The Modern Movement, 58.