Madame De Pompadour [Signed]

Nancy Mitford. With a dust jacket design by Cecil Beaton.

Hamish Hamilton and The Book Society. London. March 1954. First edition. The Book Society edition, issued at the same time as the Hamish Hamilton edition. Signed by Nancy Mitford to the half-title. Hardback, quarto; blue cloth-bound boards, top edge red, dust jacket. 276 pages. Frontispiece and 20 black-and-white hors texte plates. English. 220 x 145mm. 0.5kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; slight spotting to endpapers and fore-edge, no inscriptions; slight shelf wear to jacket, a few small nicks to top edge, some light spotting, mainly to verso, not price-clipped.

A signed copy of Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour. Mitford brings the huge personality of Madame de Pompadour to life against the backdrop of the French court. Written whilst the author was living in Paris, it is the first of three biographies of French historical figures, preceding Voltaire in Love and The Sun King. Beaton provides the charming dust jacket illustration of Madame de Pompadour in rococo splendour.