NICOLSON, Harold.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Paul Verlaine. First edition of the author's first book, in the rare dust jacket: we have handled only two other copies in the jacket, and can trace none at auction.Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) was a diplomat and member of the Bloomsbury Group, who had married Vita Sackville-West in 1913. Theirs was an "open" marriage, and both Vita and Harold continued to have homosexual relationships with numerous different people throughout their lives, though they were also deeply devoted to one another, and had two sons. Nicolson had served in the foreign office during the First World War (handing the Germans Britain's declaration of war in 1914), and would go on to have a career in the diplomatic service and, briefly, in politics. His biography of the French poet Paul Verlaine was his first publication, the first of several studies of literary figures including Tennyson, Byron, Swinburne and Sainte-Beuve, as well as a political novel, Public Faces (1932).

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.