[Signed] New Country - Prose and Poetry by the Authors of New Signatures (AUDEN GROUP) AUDEN, W.H.; ISHERWOOD, Christopher; SPENDER, Stephen; UPWARD,

FIRST EDITION of this seminal collection, signed to front free endpaper by Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, Edward Upward and W.H. Auden (signing vertically as Wystan). 1200 copies printed. Other contributors include Cecil Day Lewis, William Plomer and John Lehmann. From the library of Olive Mangeot, wife of the violinist Andre Mangeot who hired Isherwood in 1925 to be part-time secretary of his string quartet. Another member of the quartet was the cellist and conductor John Barbirolli. Olive Mangeot became a sort of honorary mother to Isherwood and his friends. They were frequent visitors at her home and would inscribe copies of their books to her, although it is unusual to have their signatures together. Octavo. Finely rebound in green and yellow marbled vellum by James Brockman of Oxford in 2001, with design blocked in gilt to upper board replicating the arrangement of the signatures, lettered to spine in gilt, AEG, new endpapers. Housed in a custom green solander box. Book and box fine. [Bloomfield & Mendelson, B7]