Waugh, Evelyn

8vo, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY WAUGH FOR GRAHAM GREENE ("Graham | a bad book for a good friend | from | Evelyn | Sept 2nd 1952") on front free endpaper, with additional notecard from Waugh to Greene loosely inserted ("P.S. ...if you want a lump sum. Borrow it from bank or publishers...offering in return the yearly allowance from your US publishers..."), original blue cloth, titled in gilt on spine, top edge blue, DUST-JACKET, collector's red chemise and morocco backed box, dust-jacket worn at edges with some loss at head and foot of spine, tear to lower edge of lower panel

Graham Greene, book-label and presentation inscription

INSCRIBED FOR WAUGH'S "HONOURED FRIEND" GRAHAM GREENE.

Greene and Waugh, who were contemporaries at Oxford, exchanged inscribed copies of their books throughout their lives and regularly reviewed each other's writing. 

Waugh's description of this as "a bad book" follows a letter he sent to Greene earlier the same year, shortly after finishing the draft: "I finished that book I was writing. Not good. Of course all writers write some bad books but it seems a pity at this particular time. It has some excellent farce, but only for a few pages. The rest very dull. Well, the war was like that." (27 February 1952, Letters (1980), p.370). 

Despite Waugh's apparent poor opinion of the book, it went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 1952.