Bates (H.E.) Love for Lydia, autograph manuscript signed, 1951-52.

Bates (Herbert Ernest, writer, 1905-74) Love for Lydia, autograph manuscript signed "H.E. Bates", c. 780pp. (comprising 700 numbered pages and 80 unnumbered pages with some text changed or not used), in blue ink, numerous corrections and crossings out and extensively revised throughout, on loose ff., written on rectos only, slightly browned, a few ff. a little creased, typed note from copy typist firm of pinned to first f., Ethel Christian Ltd. housed in a red morocco-backed cloth box, gilt spine, by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, slightly faded, 4to, [late 1951 - early 1952].

⁂ H.E. Bates finest novel. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Bates novel "Love for Lydia... [as] perhaps his most accomplished"; and by Dean R. Baldwin, in H.E. Bates: A Literary Life: 'his best work is Love for Lydia... a novel of the jazz age set in a small midlands town... is far more than a romantic tale, more even than a commentary on the hedonistic mores of the 1920s." Set in the Northamptonshire of his childhood, Bates set a love story against a country changed by war and beset with the crumbling standards of a different age.