"BROOKFIELD WILL NEVER FORGET HIS LOVABLENESS"

HILTON, James. Good-bye, Mr. Chips. (London): Hodder & Stoughton, 1934. Small octavo, original royal blue cloth, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. $1800.

Preferred first English edition of Hilton's heartwarming paean to traditional British schooling, featuring four full-page illustrations.

Hilton's Good-bye, Mr. Chips earned immediate high praise on publication as "a minor miracle… Mr. Chips himself… with his crusty but deeply rooted loyalties—to the classics, to Brookfield, and to England—is a figure to cherish in one's memory" (New York Times). In his review in The New Yorker, Alexander Woolcott concurred: "There has just been published in this country a tender and gentle story as warming to the heart and as nourishing to the spirit as any I can remember." With Good-bye Mr. Chips, "Hilton succeeded in creating an endearing and enduring archetype" (Parker & Kermode, 177). The novella, which first appeared as a supplement to The British Weekly in October 1934, was first adapted to the screen in 1939, earning star Robert Donat an Oscar, and again in 1969, winning Peter O'Toole an Oscar nomination. Preceded by the same year's American edition.

Book fine; slight edge-wear and rubbing, mild soiling to scarce very good dust jacket.