[WILLIAMSON, Henry]. The Gold Falcon, or the Haggard of Love. London, Faber, [1933].
8vo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered and ornamented in gilt, original printed dust-wrappers in red, black and with illustrations printed in gilt over red, not price-clipped; pp. 415; wrapper a bit spotted and dusted, small marginal flaws and tears, very light offsetting from endpapers, a good copy in the rarely seen wrappers.
First edition of this anonymously published roman à clef of English literary life and circles in the thirties. Lawrence appears in the text as ‘G.B. Everest’.Williamson wrote later in Genius of Friendship 'my work was Snowdon to his Everest'. - Williamson writing in 'Genius of Friendship'. Among the other thinly disguised characters in this book are Siegfried Sassoon ('Sherston Savage'), Aldous Huxley ('Adolf Stucley'), T.S. Eliot ('P.S. Etiol)', John Galsworthy ('Holsworthy'), H.G.Wells ('Springs'), Thomas Washington Metcalfe ('Thomas Volstead Wrink') and J.B.Priestley ('P.B. Bradford'). Priestley took offence and remarked 'a great oozing slab of self-pity, bearing the wet trade-mark of Henry Williamson'. Williamson's Tarka had 'attracted the attention of T. E. Lawrence, whose letter of praise started a correspondence and friendship between the two. Indeed, Lawrence's fatal motorcycle crash on 14 May 1935 occurred as he was returning from a trip to the post office to send a telegram to Williamson, who later wrote a memoir of his friendship with Lawrence, Genius of Friendship (ODNB).
O’Brien F1130.
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