"It Gives Me Great Pleasure" 1955 BEATON, Cecil (INSCRIBED)
$1,250
BEATON, Cecil
[214] pp.
Weidenfeld & Nicholson
1955
8 3/4" x 5 7/8"
NF/ VG
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First edition, first printing. Inscribed presentation copy. With two autograph letters signed on Beaton's Reddish House stationery. Original green cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dust wrapper. With the bookplate of Mary Anna Marten to the front free endpaper. An excellent near fine copy, with a family Christmas gift inscription to the front pastedown. Complete with the very good rubbed and nicked price-clipped dustwrapper.
Inscribed by Cecil Beaton in black ink on the title page “For Mary Anna - With Love from Mrs. Charles B. Emery and Cecil Beaton”. Tipped in to the rear endpapers are two autograph letters from the author to Mary Anna Marten.
Rare 'association' copy replete with the 'Crichel House' bookplate of Mary Anna Marten, OBE (1929-2010) god-daughter to The Queen Mother and sister to Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster.
Her son, Napier was a page at the coronation of Elizabeth II.
In the winter of 1952-3 and for six weeks in 1954 Beaton completed two lecture tours of America, combating his nerves and delivering his speech to a string of Ladies’ Clubs across the continent. It Gives Me Great Pleasure is an account of his adventures on these tours. The book is as much about discovering the people and places of America as it is about the lecture tour itself. Beaton visited many cities, including Detroit, Seattle, Chicago, Grand Rapids, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, Florida, Boston and Montreal in Canada. Each destination had a different hotel, a different audience, a different culture and a different taxi driver.