POWELL, Anthony (ed.); AUBREY, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings. First edition thus, presentation copy from Powell, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Lucy, with love from Tony Powell". The recipient, Lucy Hayes, was "a great love and lifelong friend" of Anthony Powell's father Philip, whom she met in the early 1920s. Violet Powell, reminiscing about Philip, her father-in-law, noted that "he had not been without his partisans, mostly ladies with whom he had been on flirtatious terms" (A Stone in the Shade, 2002). Anthony Powell "accepted their relationship and was fond of Lucy. She greatly enjoyed his novels". He inscribed several of his books to her. Powell was a reluctant and at times ungracious signer of his own books, even for friends. Lucy Hayes (1878-1965) served as a nurse in the First World War. She worked at the Dimitri Palace in St Petersburg, the main Anglo-Russian Hospital, and a photograph album relating to her time there is held by the Imperial War Museum.

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