Together with autographed card and vibrant Ralph Keene dust wrapper
Waugh, Alex ~ The Last Chukka: Stories of East and West
First UK Printing : Chapman and Hall Ltd., London: 1928
8vo., black boards embossed with publisher’s device to front cover; lettered in gilt to backstrip; together in the striking green, blue and yellow dust wrapper featuring a design by Ralph Keene; priced 7/6 net to spine; THE BOOK front board with some light scratches; a few light spots to the fore-edge and prelims; with mild offsetting to half title; else a very good copy; the DUST WRAPPER retaining much of its brightness to the upper panel; overall light shelf wear and toning; chipped and creased to spine ends and folds; 2cm hole to the lower panel (not affecting text); and some closed tears to the head of spine (no more than 2cm long). The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, with a tipped-in card from the Royal York Hotel, Sidmouth affixed to the front free endpaper, signed ‘here is my autograph’ by the author. Alec Waugh was somewhat overshadowed in his lifetime by his elder brother, Evelyn, though Alec too began writing from a young age. His first published work, The Loom of Youth was inspired by his experiences at Sherborne School in Dorset, and was highly controversial at the time for its homosexual undertones. After serving in the First World War, and spending much of it in prisoner of war camps, Waugh remained a successful writer. The Last Chukka was his thirteenth published work, with the tales divided into sections on ‘London’, the ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘East of Suez’, and follows his travels in Egypt, Siam, and the Pacific Islands. The title story follows the British Manager of a Siamese Lumber Camp who goes ‘jungle-crazy’, while others in the book tell of passionate love affairs and mysteries which stretch from Wessex trains through to the Virgin Islands. Told predominantly in the first person, they follow the author’s “callow saunterings through Soho restaurants and Mayfair drawing rooms and ending with surprise encounters in tropic seas. As Alec Waugh sojourns from Malayan rice fields to Levantine hospitals, from German opera houses to sleepy islands in the Indian Ocean, his plots rise happily out of the travelogue prose.” (Time). Very scarce thus, with the striking period wrapper.
BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Very Good
£750