Cambridge: Rampant Lions Press, 1938

Oblong 12mo, unpaginated. Original black stiff paper wrappers, lettered in pale blue to front panel. Paper stock of different colours. Small closed tear to head of flat spine, otherwise a near fine copy.

First edition. CHARLES HANDLEY-READ'S COPY WITH HIS OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE TO FRONT FREE ENDPAPER.

A collection of twenty-six clerihews, with blank pages bound in at the rear for the reader's own additions. On the page headed 'THE AUTHORS' the last line of text is missing, thereby omitting the name of the author of The Emperor Pertinax.

Charles Handley-Read [1916-1971] was a writer on architecture and a collector in the field of Victorian decorative arts. He read architecture at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, and would have been an undergraduate when he bought this volume (which was published in Cambridge) on 28 October 1938.

A second edition was published in 1946 and surfaces occasionally, but the first, offered here, is extremely scarce -- especially with such a provenance.