English Wits by Eric RAVILIOUS (Illus.)
RUSSELL, Leonard (Ed.); RAVILIOUS, Eric (Illus.). English Wits: Their Lives and Jests. London: Hutchinson, 1940.
First edition. Dust jacket, half-title, and headpieces by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942), painter, illustrator, lithographer, wood engraver, and designer, now regarded as one of the finest English artists of the twentieth century. Ravilious served as a war artist and was killed on a search and rescue flight from Iceland in September 1942.
This book is a treasury of wit and biography, edited by Leonard Russell (1906-74), literary editor of the Sunday Times. Contents include Alexander Pope by Dilys Powell; Dr Johnson by Ronald A. Knox; Oscar Wilde by Desmond MacCarthy; Whistler by D.B. Wyndham Lewis; Sydney Smith by Ernest Newman; Theodore Hook by A.J.A. Symons; Charles Lamb by Robert Lynd; Sheridan by Campbell Dixon; John Wilkes by Olga Venn; Henry Labouchere by W.W. Hadley; Max Beerbohm by Gerard Hopkins; George Bernard Shaw by Harold Hobson; "Saki" by John Gore; Mary Russell Mitford by James Agate.
xiv, 350pp. 8vo, original cloth, bottom corner bumped, edges a little spotted. Very good in very good dust jacket (slight edge-wear; not price-clipped).