Patchwork by Beverley Nichols, First Edition (2 results)

Condition: Good. First edition. 305pp. Free endpapers browned & prelims & edges slightly foxed. Patchy fading to cover. Good hardback. Nichols' second book, very rare in this edition.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Patchwork, Nichols, Beverley. Published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1921. First Edition; no other printings listed. Green cloth boards, gilt spine titles. Spine is faded, boards have patchy fading and some surface wrinkling (see pictures). Binding is secure. Light toning and penciled owner's name and date (1921) free endpaper. 2 tiny smudge marks outside of text block on separate pages; otherwise pages are clean and without folds or tears. Patchwork is Nichols' second book, very rare in this edition. The book received high critical acclaim: ¿a novel which at once takes a distinguished place in the gallery of University fiction¿. The Saturday Review, 22 October 1922. Here is the preface: It is the custom of novelists to-day, even when writing obviously of public men or women, glibly to inform their readers that these characters are entirely imaginary. Whether such a fiction expresses a secret wish that they had indeed been creatures of the brain and not of the flesh, I do not know. I would merely say that it is not a fiction in which I would myself indulge. It would have been quite impossible, in writing of that university from which I have so recently and so reluctantly departed, to banish from my memory the figures which coloured its stage so vividly, to try to shut from my ears the echo of their laughter and their talk. And so I may as well admit that a few a very few of the characters in this book are founded on fact. Where this has been the case I have been scrupulous that the persons concerned should read the manuscript before it was published. In no case has any objection been raised. Raymond Sheldon, however, the chief figure (he would have hated to be called a hero), is, to the best of my knowledge, an imaginary character. It is true that he did many things which I myself did, but he did them in quite a different way; and though I admire him very much, I do not approve of all his actions. For the sake of unity certain happenings have been transposed as far as their chronological order is concerned.