LOT OF THREE (3) SCARCE OUT-OF-PRINT TRUE 1ST EDITION HC LEES-MILNE DIARIES
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LOT OF THREE (3) SCARCE OUT-OF-PRINT TRUE 1ST EDITION HC LEES-MILNE DIARIES:
$150.00
Indiscreet, irresistibly vivid diaries…a precious portrait of an almost vanished society. --- THE TIMES
His eye for detail and ear for gossip (make) them one of the funniest and most enjoyable documents of the 20th century. --- DAILY TELEGRAPH
By turns hilarious, outrageous, acute and touching.--- JAMES FERGUSSON, THE INDEPENDENT
If the reader will start at the first page of the first book, Ancestral Voices, and read straight through the years and then decades, it wll be seen that this highly educated, fallible, finical, often nervous man has brought twentieth-century England out of the mists as no one else quite has. He belongs with Saint-Simon, Madame de Sevigne, Pepys, Bowell, Woolf: not all strictly diarists but all similarly capable of sophisticated, sharply etched social portraiture. --- LARRY MCMURTRY, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
Trying to read only one volume of James Lees-Milne’s delightful diaries is like trying to eat a single potato chip (or crisp).
With their heady mixture of social and cultural history, wit, malice, gossip and often scandalous anecdote --- leavened by style and grace --- they are indeed addictive.
Educated at Eton and Oxford, Lees-Milne [1908-1997] first served as a private secretary and a journalist before finding his true vocation with Britain\'s National Trust in 1936 as a representative of its then nascent Historic Buildings initiative. After being invalided out of the Army in 1941 he rejoined the organization and maintained a strong lifelong tie to it as an employee and consultant.
A good many of his 25 or so years with the NT were spent inspecting the historic buildings offered by their proud, usually ---- shall we politely say --- eccentric and very often “house poor” titled owners. His observations on these grandees and their grand (not so grand, and grand-in-mind-only) properties lie at the heart of the diaries. But over the course of the five plus decades covered in them, Lees-Milne\'s gimlet eye takes in the whole of English society: its movers and shakers as well as its “shaken.” Few foibles or failings go unremarked including, disarmingly, his own.
CONDITION/DESCRIPTION:Upfor sale are the long out of print fourth, fifth and sixth volumes ofthe splendid Lees-Milne 12 volume diaries in true hardcover firsteditions. Each is clean and tight and in remarkably good shape forits age. The book titles, as you may know, come from style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; border: none; padding: 0in;\"> Midwayon the Waves(1948-49).faber and faber, London, 1985. First edition. ISBN: 0571137237. NearFine book in Very Good+ unclipped dust jacket/wrapper. 8vo. 248 pp.Blue boards, lettered in gold at the spine. Pages show light agetoning as might be expected. Jacket/wrapper also shows some slightage toning, rubbing and other minor shelf wear on front and backpanels. Very scarce especially in this condition.
A Mingled Measure(1953-1972). John Murray, London,1994. ISBN: 0719953628. First edition.Very Good+ book in Very Good+ unclipped dust jacket/wrapper. Book would be rated Near Fine except for a binding flaw (raised area or bump in cloth at lower right corner of cover approximately 1.5 cm in diameter). 8vo. 325 pp. Green boards, lettered in gold at the spine. Only very light age toning on pages. Dust jacket/wrapper shows very minor, unobtrusive shelf wear (primarily some very slight wrinkling along top edge of front panel and at top of spine).
Ancient as the Hills (1973-74). John Murray, London, 1997. ISBN: 0719555965. First edition. Near Fine book and Near Fine unclipped dust jacket/wrapper. 8vo. 228 pp. Green boards, lettered in gold at the spine. Only the lightest age toning to the pages. Very slight shelf wear along top edge of front panel and top of spine of dust volume is hard to come by and the chance to acquire all three at one time at this price and in this condition is an unusual opportunity.
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LOT OF THREE (3) SCARCE OUT-OF-PRINT TRUE 1ST EDITION HC LEES-MILNE DIARIES:
$150.00