GREEN, Henry.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Caught. A Novel. First edition, Roger Senhouse's copy, including an autograph letter signed by the author to him. Senhouse has also extensively annotated the volume, recording his conversations with Green about the novel and containing key insights. A member of the Bloomsbury Group, Senhouse was a publisher and also the last lover of Lytton Strachey.Dated the same year as publication, Senhouse's annotations include a record of a conversation during which he "tackled Henry G on some of the characters and the incidents" of the novel. Senhouse further relays various anecdotes which illuminate the autobiographical aspects of the work; Green's opinion that the protagonist "is not a good case to hang up to possible libel", and discussions of other members of the Bloomsbury group, including Julia Tomlin and Hester Pellat. While London was under the Blitz, Green served in the Auxiliary Fire Service. He was "responding to air raids, frequenting jazz clubs, falling serially in love, socializing with other firemen, and writing one of his best novels, [Caught,] which amounted to a virtual live feed of all that activity" (Robson). According to Senhouse's annotation, Green informed him that "the firemen always stole". Leonard Woolf too lamented the problems of the fire service as depicted in the novel, which portrays them as "completely inefficient and corrupt from top to bottom without a single redeeming feature or even averagely competent and honest person in it" (Woolf, cited in Treglow

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