"THE ONLY FIRST-RATE COMIC GENIUS THAT HAS APPEARED IN ENGLISH SINCE BERNARD SHAW": FIRST EDITION OF EVELYN WAUGH'S BLACK MISCHIEF, IN ORIGINAL DUST JACKET

WAUGH, Evelyn. Black Mischief. London: Chapman and Hall, (1932). Octavo, original red and black "snakeskin" cloth, original dust jacket. $8500.

First trade edition of Waugh"s third novel, praised on publication as "a brilliant comic-opera tale," in the scarce original dust jacket. A beautiful copy.

In Black Mischief, Evelyn Waugh's bitingly satiric third novel, he "created the mythical island kingdom of Azania. Basil Seal, a bad-egg aristocrat who is the hero, steals his mother's emeralds, runs away to Azania, manipulates its politics and… unknowingly eats his sweetheart at a cannibal feast." Critics praised the novel on publication as a "brilliant comic-opera tale… Writing in 1944, the American critic Edmund Wilson said Waugh 'is likely to figure as the only first-rate comic genius that has appeared in English since Bernard Shaw.' Two decades later, that judgment was sustained by Gore Vidal, who called him "our time's first satirist" (New York Times). Published along with a signed limited edition (250 copies), no priority established. With frontispiece map. Davis, Doyle et al., 6.

A fine copy in an exceptional about-fine dust jacket with only very mild toning to spine.