When the Going Was Good

London: Duckworth, 1946. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine-/Very Good+. First Impression of this omnibus edition, collecting Waugh's best travel dispatches. Demy 8vo (216 x 135mm): 318pp, with color portrait frontispiece of Waugh aged 26 by Henry Lamb and folding map of British Guiana tipped in facing p. 196. Publisher's canary yellow cloth lettered in dark blue, illustrated dust priced 15/-. Near Fine or better (spine ends crimped, dust-soiled edges); Very Good or better jacket (tape remnants along reverse edges). Davis XX. During the 1930s, Waugh traveled widely in Europe, Africa, and South America. In 1930, he attended the coronation of the Haile Selassie in Abyssinia, returning there five years later as a correspondent for the Daily Mail to cover the Italian invasion from a pro-Mussolini standpoint. Between these visits, his sojourns in South America included an arduous trek from British Guiana into Brazil. Throughout this time he had no permanent base in England, staying in hotels and at friends' houses, where he did most of his writing. His travel books from this decade—Labels: A Mediterranean Journal (1930), Remote People (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934), and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936)—were abridged and published in this single volume. "The experiences they record, already coloured by Waugh's eye for the absurd, served as the raw material for a group of novels that confirmed his place as one of England's great comic writers: Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), regarded by many critics as his finest pre-war novel, and Scoop (1938). All of them tended to reflect his fascination with 'the borderlands of conflicting cultures and states of development,' where he found 'the experiences vivid enough to demand translation into literary form.'" (Literary Encyclopedia) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).