SMITH, Dodie.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Look Back With Love; Look Back With Mixed Feelings; Look Back With Astonishment; Look Back With Gratitude. First editions, first impressions, a rare presentation set of her complete autobiography: each volume is inscribed "To/For Ethel with Love from Dodie", dated in the respective years of publication, on the front free endpaper. Loosely inserted is a note of provenance, dated 1992, stating that Dodie's local vicar in Finchingfield believed the recipient was her friend Ethel Warren.Ethel Warren was possibly related to Dodie Smith's former neighbour, Clarence Henry Warren (1895-1966), who wrote works on country living such as England is a Village (1940). Dodie and her husband Alec "began taking Henry with them on their Thursday shopping excursions to Sudbury... The three of them made a habit of making a detour each week to some old Suffolk house, Domesday Book village, or ruined manor on the way to market... They had seen more of Henry than anyone else since they returned to England, and [after his death] she would miss those drives into the countryside" (Grove, pp. 226 & 283).Dodie moved into the 17th-century Finchingfield cottage The Barretts in 1934, the same year she acquired her first Dalmatian, Pongo, whom she immortalized in The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Dodie lived in The Barretts for most of her life and still owned the home upon her death in 1990. The accompanying note of provenance states that these volumes were purchased at the Finchingfield Spring Fair o

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