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Forster, E.M.
Presentation Copy from E. M. Forster to Roger Senhouse. Alexandria: A History and Guide.
Publisher: Whitehead Morris Limited; Alexandria,
Date of Publication: 1938
Stock Code: 14165
Second Edition. Octavo, pp., xii, 220, two folding plans plus two maps, as called for. Publisher’s original burnt orange paper boards, titled to spine and upper board. Title-page boldly inscribed in Forster’s inimitable hand “E M Foster for Roger” and dedication page also corrected by the author to the original dedicatee of the first edition, G. H. Ludolf. With Roger Senhouse’s ownership signature and annotation by him to front free endpaper “dedicated & corrected by EMF 25.01.43. The taking of Tripoli and the drinking of 2 bottles of Algerian Wine”. Minor shelf-wear to spine-tips, corners very lightly bumped. Contents clean, bright, and fresh. With the remains of the original glassine dust-jacket loosely laid-in. A very good copy. The surviving correspondence between Forster and Roger Senhouse (1899– 1970) reveals a very close, possibly intimate relationship. Judging from Senhouse’s annotation here he obviously valued the relationship and this gift and wished to mark the evening with his annotation. During WWII Alexandria was a major supply and staging post for the Allies, with Tripoli being a similarly important North African port for the Axis powers. The Allied victory at Tripoli on January 23, 1943, just two days before this inscription, effectively ended the Axis presence in LIbYa and was a major success in the North African campaign. Forster would have been delighted. As the co-owner of Secker & Warburg, Senhouse was a peripheral member of the Bloomsbury Group and was posthumously revealed to have been in a sado-masochistic relationship with the novelist and fellow Bloomsbury Group member Lytton Strachey. Lawrence Durrell, author of ‘The Alexandrian Quartet’ wrote of this book: “the whole historical perspective of the city, in all its variety, has been captured and fixed in a series of short essays brightly starred with all the virtues of this fine artist. With a marvelous economy he brings the place to life - and gives life to the great personages who inhabited it: philosophers, poets, mathematicians, courtesans. Each portrait is a cameo. And the book despite its strictly utilitarian form and severely practical arrangement of matter is the work of a master essayist. It is in fact vintage Forster.”
£2500.00