Hades! The Ladies! Being Extracts from the Diary of a Draper Charles Cavers, Esquire, late of Bond Street London, West. With a foreword by 'Sacheverell Smith' [i.e. the author]. (SIGNED)

Gurney & Jackson, London & Edinburgh, 1933. Book. Very Good. Hardcover. Signed by Author(s). 1st Edition. First Edition (first printing). This copy signed by the author on the title page and dated 1942. 8vo. xv, 363pp. Reddy-brown cloth with a paper spine label (and a spare tipped-in at the rear). The cloth lightly faded at the backstrip, and with a small enclosed split to the head of the upper joint, which just impacts the spine label. Top edge lightly dust soiled, and the free endpapers very lightly toned and spotted. A very good copy in lightly dust soiled price-clipped dust wrapper, with several centimetres of corresponding loss to the head of the front panel-spine panel join, and a little accompanying creasing. The author's second book, the humorous fictional diary of a west end draper, presumably inspired by his own experiences managing the family draper business. The format of the present work is not dissimilar to the author's first book, 'The Private Papers of a Bankrupt Bookseller' (1931). The rear panel of this present dust wrapper includes some reviews of his previous effort, my personal favourite being "Badly presented, poorly edited . the outpourings of a genius". Sir William Young Darling (1885-1962) was the Unionist Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for the Edinburgh South constituency from 1945 to 1957, and also director of the Royal Bank of Scotland over roughly the same period..