The Grub Street Nights Entertainments

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. Covers a bit worn, split to rear joint, but a very good copy. 8vo. Original black cloth, printed paper spine label. First edition. The dedication copy, inscribed on the dedication page to Lady Eileen Oude: "From [indistinct nickname?] Oct. 7 1924." And with an ALS tipped to the facing leaf, 8vo, two pages, October 7, 1924, "you will be surprised, and may be disgusted, to see that this book is dedicated to you. It had to be: it all sprang out of the first one which was written for you! – and partly by – you! and until then I never dreamt I could write a story. It is published today & I wanted you to have it on the day. That is why I send it instead of bringing it – I am at home not well. Yours Jack Squire." The printed dedication reads "To Lady Eileen Orde Who Fired the Pistol at the Start." The Bloomsbury group named the coterie of writers that surrounded Squire as the Squirearchy. Alan Pryce-Jones was Squire's assistant on the Mercury and wrote: "Among his contemporaries ... his reputation was variable. Many of them, such as Virginia Woolf, found him coarse; they thought, with reason, that he drank too much; they had little confidence in the group, known as the Squirearchy, which surrounded him.