A Scrap Screen by Alice Buchan lands on the |> SALE <| shelves in my shop.
Hamish Hamilton, 1979, Hardback in dust wrapper.
Illustrated by way of: Black & White Photographs; Black & White Drawings;
From the cover: In the nurseries of Alice Buchans childhood there used always to be scrap screens, three-leaved, with pictures of St Bernard dogs, royal personages, kittens and children with hoops. She has given the modest title of A Scrap Screen to a book of delightful, often humorous reminiscences, not only of her own lost domains of childhood, often spent in great houses, but from hearsay about her ancestors from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Although descended from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Earl-Bishop of Derry, she writes mostly of people who are not necessarily known to readers of biographies but who nevertheless were closely connected with famous personalities and were typical of a leisured, privileged style of life, now gone for ever. She writes of Stuart Wortleys, Wellesleys, Pagets, Grosvenors; of an elopement, alarm over the Reform Bill, Whig families and Tory families, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, country house parties, servants; of nouses such as Eaton Hall and Moor Park. Finally there comes the marriage of her mother, Susan Grosvenor, to an unknown young barrister from Scotland, the son of a Presbyterian minister: John Buchan. Alice was the eldest of four all wanted, encouraged, praised; in due course she became chatelaine of Charlecote Park, now National Trust, through whose rooms more people now pass in a season than did in a hundred or even two hundred years previously.
Letters and diaries from battered tin boxes have played a part in illuminating Alice Buchans forbears for us. Yet, above all, perhaps unconsciously, she is writing of herself and what she is observing, identifying, recording, in a haunting yet lyrical book.
Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. Price Clipped. Dust wrapper has been sealed in a protective mylar layer. Leans slightly. Text complete, clean and tight.
Orange boards with Silver titling to the Spine. 182 pages. Index. 8¾” x 5¾”.
This book will be eventually reach my delightful website…(added to my Biography category.) but get 60% off buying from this very blog blog… Buy it now for just £2.60 + P&P! Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!
