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The dedication is to the individual that the character 'Orlando' by Virginia Woolf was based upon !! Hand-Signed to the full title page: states: 'To Philip Davies, Gratefully, and with shared fondness for Gordon and Dawn, Edward Ball, Sept 23, 2002' - Research suggests that Dawn and Gordon were the same person: Dawn Langley Pepita Simmons (probably 1922 18 September 2000) was a prolific English author and biographer. - Born as Gordon Langley Hall, Simmons lived her first decades as a male. As a young adult, she became close to British actress Dame Margaret Rutherford, whom she considered an adoptive mother and who was the subject of a biography Simmons wrote in later years. After sex reassignment surgery in 1968, Simmons wed in the first legal interracial marriage in South Carolina. Simmons's parents were servants at Sissinghurst Castle, the English estate of biographer Harold Nicolson and his novelist wife, Vita Sackville-West. Simmons was born in Sussex as Gordon Langley Hall to Jack Copper, Vita Sackville-West's chauffeur, and another servant, Marjorie Hall Ticehurst, before they were married. Although she claimed to have been born with an unusual condition that resulted in the swelling of her genitals with the result that she was mistakenly identified as a boy, Charleston author Edward Ball's book Peninsula of Lies (2004) states that she was born male. As a child, Simmons was raised by her grandmother and at one point visited the castle and met Virginia Woolf, Sackville-West's lover. Woolf made Sackville-West the subject of the novel Orlando: A Biography, which bears a striking resemblance to Simmons' own life story. EDWARD BALL - Edward Ball (born October 8, 1959) is an American writer, a university instructor and the author of five books of non-fiction, including Slaves in the Family (1998). - Slaves in the Family is a book about the author's family, slaveowners in South Carolina for 170 years. It recounts the author's search for and meetings with African Americans whose ancestors his family once enslaved.[1] The book won the National Book Award, became a New York Times bestseller, was featured on Oprah, and was translated into several languages. - An investigation of 175 years of slave ownership by the author's family in South Carolina. - CONDITION & DESCRIPTION: - Dustjacket has the 'National Book Award Gold label' to the front board. Little creased at the extremities but now flattened as it is housed in a removable plastic archival sleeve. Retains price to inner front prelim. - Two tone black cloth and white board with gold gilt decoration to the spine and front board. In a beautiful clean condition with scuffed corners and a couple of dings to the extremities. - Decorated endpages seem to depict slaves housing in the American South back in the day. This imagery is very atmospheric. Numerous historical imagery throughout the biography. Pages are clean throughout and all tightly bound to the page block. - END - Our orders are shipped within 1 or 2 business days. - Thanks for your interest.
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