"FROM THE AUTHOR—WHO LOVES HER": INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY OF CLIVE BELL'S OLD FRIENDS

(BLOOMSBURY GROUP) BELL, Clive. Old Friends. Personal Recollections. London: Chatto & Windus, 1956. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. $2500.

First edition of Bell's collection of personal essays on Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, and the Bloomsbury Group in general. Presentation copy inscribed by Bell on the front free endpaper: "For Dear Jeanne [De Casalis] from the author—who loves her. January 1957."

Clive Bell, of course, married Vanessa, sister of Virginia Woolf, and was a critical member of the renowned Bloomsbury Group. "His book falls into two parts: appreciations of people he has known intimately; and random recollections of those whom he has known long but less well." In addition to personal reminiscences of Woolf, Strachey, Keynes, Fry, and Eliot, Old Friends includes essays on Bloomsbury, "Paris 1904," and "Paris in the 'Twenties." With frontispiece depicting Roger Fry and Bell by Max Beerbohm, and seven other photographic portraits. The recipient of this copy Jeanne De Casalis (1896-1966) was a popular radio, stage and film actress, as well as a playwright. Laid into this copy is a 1962 handwritten doctor's prescription for Jeanne De Casalis.

Book near-fine, dust jacket with shallow edge-wear and creasing, very good.