Books and characters. French & English

London: Chatto & Windus, 1922. FIRST EDITION. With frontispiece and 5 plates. Original green buckram with paper spine label; some very faint spotting to preliminaries, otherwise a very nice uncut copy. First edition of this collection of essays on literary figures. The majority of the papers first appeared in journals such as The Independent Review, The New Quarterly, The Anathæum, and the Edinburgh Review. One exception is The dialogue, "now printed for the first time, from a manuscript, apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire and belonging to his (truncated) English period." Other titles include Shakespeare's final period; Voltaire and Frederick the Great; and Lady Hester Stanhope. Strachey (1880-1932), was the eleventh of the thirteen children of Sir Richard and Lady Strachey, who took a great interest in literature and politics. Lytton was thus surrounded by many of the leading writers and thinkers of the day. He attended Cambridge, where he befriended Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf's brother Thoby Stephen and his long-time friend John Maynard Keyes. He authored a number of biographies, as well as literary reviews for The Spectator. BMC, XXIV, 136. (Inventory #: 11633)