Art Forms in Nature. Examples from the Plant World Photographed Direct From Nature. With an Introduction by Karl Nierendorf. INTERESTING ASSOCIATION COPY. A GIFT FROM HAROLD ACTON TO JOHN FOTHERGILL.

A. Zwemmer. 1929. First edition. Large 4to. No DW. Original green cloth gilt. A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FROM HAROLD ACTON TO JOHN FOTHERGILL, "To John Fothergill, with all the warmest compliments of the season - Christmas 1929. From Harold Acton." Spine slightly knocked and worn, contents slightly shaken, occasional browning to pages otherwise a clean and sound copy of unique item that ties in two of the "Bright Young Things" of the period between the wars. In 1922, Fothergill bought the Spread Eagle Hotel in Thame and turned it into a success through the decade before it closed in 1931. The pub was regularly visited by Evelyn Waugh and associates, and is mentioned in Brideshead Revisited. Waugh gave Fothergill a copy of his first novel, Decline and Fall, in which he wrote, "John Fothergill, Oxford's only civilizing influence." Fothergill hid the copy in the inn's toilet to avoid theft. Harold Acton also visited the inn and namechecked Fothergill in his memoirs, Memoirs of an Aesthete. Fothergill praised Acton's novel, Humdrum, saying that it "might have been written by the young Wilde." Fothergill's book, My Three Inns recommends Acton's autobiography at the end. Fothergill also wrote the famous "Confessions of an Innkeeper". (Wikipedia). …