Diana Cooper, inscribed, signed, and dated by Diana Cooper in the year of publication to John Nova Phillips.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981. First edition. Hardcover. This first edition, first printing of the biography of Lady Diana Cooper is inscribed and signed by Lady Cooper in the year of publication and offers a convocation of literary associations. Lady Cooper inscribed the half title in seven lines: "For John Phillips, after | many years of | great | affection | from | Diana Cooper | Sept 7th '81". The only previous ownership mark in the book is the illustrated bookplate of "JOHN NOVA PHILLIPS" affixed to the upper front pastedown.
John Nova Phillips (1926-2016) was "a literary figure from a bygone age, who could have been a character in a novel by Somerset Maugham" and was the longtime companion of, and served as literary executor for, Violet Trefusis, author, socialite, and known for her lengthy affair with Vita Sackville-West.
Cooper was 89 years old when she signed and inscribed this book, and her slightly shaky hand shows the toll of age. Condition of both book and jacket is very good. The binding is square, bright, and tight with only minor blemishes and light shelf wear to extremities. Light spotting is primarily confined to the prelims and endpapers. The dust jacket is unclipped, retaining the publisher’s original “£9.95 net” price, unfaded, and substantially complete, with trivial loss confined to the upper joints. The jacket shows light soiling, mostly to the white rear face, and some shelf wear to extremities. The jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
To say that Diana Olivia Winifred Maude Cooper, Viscountess Norwich, known as Lady Diana Cooper, (1892-1986) was an actress, society hostess, and author is accurate in summation, but woefully inadequate. Likewise, Diana’s great beauty often eclipsed her cleverness and sense of humor. Born to privilege – officially to a marquess but possibly fathered by the brother of a Baron – Diana “received no formal education” but “learned much, including great drifts of poetry.” This shaped her prose, which was vivid, and her spelling, which was idiosyncratic.
Diana formally ‘came out’ in 1910 and participated in excess in her so-called “Golden Generation”, which lost much verve and many lives to the First World War. While Diana served as a nurse at Guy’s Hospital, several of her many suitors died in the fighting. Alfred “Duff” Cooper did not, prevailing both in battlefield heroism and against the opposition of Diana’s ambitious mother. They married in June 1919. Duff had told Diana “Bores with God’s help we will never be.” They weren’t.
Acting, where Diana “gained the reputation of a hard-working actress as well as a transcendent beauty”, earned the money that enabled her husband to enter politics. Acting eventually became secondary to her only son’s education and support of her husband’s career. During the 1930s she had “opportunity to display her outstanding talent as a hostess” though she was much more. During the Second World War, supported her husband’s work in the Government of his friend, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, “even accompanying him to Singapore and the Far East against convention, and in the face of opposition.” Their zenith came when Duff became the first post-war ambassador to France. “With her remarkable ability to get on with people” Diana “collected a group of artists and writers” and “gave the embassy a glamour possessed by none other.”
Duff was created Viscount Norwich in 1952, but “Diana would have none of it, announcing in The Times that she wished to retain her former name and title, so Lady Diana Cooper she remained.” She and Duff had been together for 35 years when he died in 1954. She was “distraught without him” but filled her remaining 32 years with her son, grandchildren, friends, travel, and with the writing of her three-volume autobiography, “which was a resounding success.”
References: The Telegraph; ODNB; Ziegler, Diana Cooper; The Times. Item #008855
Price: $250.00