Scoop: A Novel About Journalists.
London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1938. Hardcover. This is a jacketed first edition, first printing of Evelyn Waugh’s final pre-Second World War novel. Scoop is Waugh’s satiric novel of sensationalist journalism, informed by his experience working for Daily Mail when he was sent to report on Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s pre-Second World War invasion of Abyssinia.
The book is the widely accepted first state of the first printing, identified by “as” being the final word printed on page 88. The dust jacket is second state, lacking the “Daily Beast” masthead at the head of the newspaper review excerpt illustration filling the dust jacket’s front face.
Condition is very good plus in good plus dust jacket. The publisher’s striking cloth binding, in a red and black snakeskin pattern with gilt-printed spine, is bright, tight, and clean with sharp corners and only a hint of shelf wear to the lower extremities. The contents are quite respectably clean. We find no previous ownership marks. Mild differential toning to the endpapers corresponds to the dust jacket flaps, affirming that this copy has spent life jacketed. Spotting is mild, primarily confined to the text block edges, with only a few, trivial incursions into the blank inner margins. The dust jacket is unclipped, retaining the original lower front flap “7s. 6d. | net” price. It also substantially complete, with only minor chip losses to the spine ends, flap fold extremities, and the bottom edge of the rear panel. Nonetheless, there are a number of aesthetic compromises, including a 1.75 inch (4.45 cm) closed tear and attendant wrinkling near the upper front joint, slight toning to the spine, and a large “Ex Libris” bookplate of “The Book Society” tipped onto the center of the front flap. The Book Society bookplate features no name, the banner reserved for the owner’s name still blank. The dust jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
Perceived liability was the reason for the two states of the first printing dust jacket. “Daily Beast” was apparently a parody of press magnate Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, where Waugh had “failed as a cub reporter” in the 1920s; allegedly Beaverbrook was not amused, neither by this nor by being spoofed within the book as Lord Copper the press baron. Beaverbrook’s threatened lawsuit reportedly persuaded the publisher to modify the dust jacket design. Of ironic note, two decades later it was Waugh who would prevail in defamation lawsuits against Beaverbrook’s press, resulting in substantial awards to Waugh.
Waugh had already begun the novel when it was set aside in April 1937 upon his marriage to his second wife and he began a life as a country gentleman. Waugh’s initial relationship with his new wife’s family was not without friction. Laura, to whom Scoop is dedicated, “was twenty, shy, a virgin, aristocratic, and astute. He was thirty-three, pugnacious, worldly, middle-class, and rash… the Herberts were a close family. At first it seems that they saw Waugh as something of a parvenu. It did not help that he lampooned their Pixton Park household as Boot Magna Hall in Scoop.” In the late 1930’s. Waugh’s financial position became precarious. His new lifestyle proved costly, while pro-Italian fascist sentiments “and his emergence as an apologist for right-wing Catholicism was endangering his broad public appeal.”
Publication of Scoop helped right Waugh’s financial ship. “Scoop (1938) was favourably reviewed and sold well.” It was his last novel published before the Second World war; “by November 1939 Waugh was at Chatham barracks undergoing officer training.” Waugh’s military service lasted until 1944, included commando service with Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill’s son, Randolph, and showed Waugh to be “a man of indomitable physical courage”. He wrote Brideshead Revisited during the war, which was published in 1945 and brought wider acclaim and more enduring financial security.
Sources: ODNB, The Evelyn Waugh Society. Item #007968
Price: $1,550.00