[Mary Churchill] — Henry James, and Mariette Lydis, illustrator | The Turn of the Screw. Aldington, Kent: Hand and Flower Press, 1943 [but 1940]

[Mary Churchill] — Henry James, and Mariette Lydis, illustrator

The Turn of the Screw. Aldington, Kent: Hand and Flower Press, 1943 [but 1940]

4to. Illustrated with six lithographs by Mariette Lydis. Original beige marbled paper-covered boards, INSCRIBED on the front free endpaper BY CLEMENTINE CHURCHILL; some wear along cover edges and down the cloth spine, spine significantly darkened. In quarter-leather cloth solander box.

WARTIME PRESENTATION COPY TO MARY CHURCHILL FROM “MUMMIE”

A beautiful book with a significant gift inscription in ink on the front free endpaper: “For my darling Mary from Mummie, Christmas 1943.”

Mary Churchill (nee Soames), Winston and Clementine Churchill’s youngest child, spent Christmas 1943 apart from her family, in London, manning a Hyde Park anti-aircraft battery as an officer in the Auxilliary Territorial Service. Her father had suffered a heart attack following the Casablanca Conference and was recuperating. Her mother had flown out to North Africa to nurse him. The Hand and Flower Press, publisher of this volume, was founded in 1940 by Erica Marx at her home in Aldington, Kent, an hour's drive from the Churchill home at Chartwell. This was the first production of the press, printed on handmade paper in a limited edition of 200 copies, of which this copy is number XXVIII. As the Colophon states: “This edition of The Turn of the Screw composed in Monotype Centaur to the design of Erica Marx was printed at the Western Printer's Press at Bristol while the drawings by Mariette Lydis were reproduced by the Cotswold Publishing Company at Wotton-Under-Edge and finished under stress and difficulty during the warring months of July-September 1940.”

PROVENANCE:

From the Estate of Lady Mary Soames