Good-Bye, Mr. Chips

Small 8vo. Blue cloth with gilt lettering. 128pp. Illustrations, pictorial endpapers. Very good. Very slightest of binding edgewear; bit of foxing to page edges and occasional leaf; lacks dust jacket. Tight and bright first edition of the English novelist's best-known work, basis for the popular 1939 romantic drama film starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson. Tipped to inner flyleaf is a choice autograph addition: Typed Note Signed from Hilton, 1p, 7½" X 10", Burbank, CA, 10 July 1939. Addressed to Arnold F. Gates (1914-93, noted Lincoln/Civil War scholar). Near fine. Two original folds. On "Warner Bros." letterhead (for Hilton was writing the screenplay for his 1937 novel "We Are Not Alone" for Warner Bros., who produced the 1939 film version), Hilton sends "Many thanks for writing to me and for sending me your bookmark. I appreciate this and consider it an excellent method of tieing up the literary and cinema angles." Boldly signed in full in black ink. 1939 was the year in which the film "Good-Bye, Mr. Chips" was released, so whatever the bookmark that Gates sent Hilton, he likely suggested a bookmark that linked Hilton's 1934 novel with the just-released film version of it.…