Life's Ebb & Flow

[1929]. First edition, first impression.  288pp, with colour plate frontispiece and further black and white plate illustrations interleafed in text.  In a later, plain, binding of brown cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine.  8vo.   Boards are worn and marked, rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends.  Mild forward lean to text block.  An ex library copy with remains of labels taped over spine, stamp and labels on the front free endpaper, annotations on the title page, and numerous stamps (including 'withdrawn') and labels on rear endpapers.  Some faint and occasional spotting throughout, more marked on the first and last few leaves, and general signs of handling, including a crack in the gutter between the frontispiece and title page.  Complete and text block tight, making a good reading or reference copy. Frances Greville (nee Maynard), known as Daisy (1861-1938) , the Countess of Warwick, was an aristocratic socialite and philanthropist, mistress of several prominent men and, for a time, of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII.  Exposure of a love letter to the married Sir Charles Beresford scandalised; love letters to others were supressed, although published by her daughter after her death.  In the late 1920s, facing imprisonment for debt, having mismanaged her fortune, she was released on the condition that if and when she published her memoirs, they be submitted first to a literary man.  Her memoirs were heavily censored but even so they shocked society and her daughter described them as 'muck'  But they have come to be considered as a one of the nest-written memoirs of Edwardian society.   A very hard to find title.