This Small World of Mine. DUFF (Sir Hector Livingston).

THE AUTHOR'S COPY, FROM "CASTLE GRIM"

Frontispiece and five plates.

First Edition. 8vo. [222 x 150 x 45 mm]. ix, [i], 300, [8] pp. Bound in the publisher's quarter grey cloth, blue cloth sides, the spine lettered in blue. In the original dust-wrapper reproducing the frontispiece and lettered in green and black (frayed around the edges, a few marks and backstrip darkened).
London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, 1936.

A good clean copy, with the armorial bookplate of the author and cut-out letter head "Ravenstone Castle, Whithorn", with manuscript note "the "Castle Grim" of the book". There is also a loosely inserted sheet with pencil notes on the origins of the Castle and a photocopy of the author's obituary.

This Small World of Mine "deals with one of the few parts of Great Britain, lying outside of the ordinary tourist tracks, which still retain much of the character and traditions of the past age, and described everyday life in one of those queer old castles of which so few are now inhabited, and the like of which, once they have fallen into ruins, will never be seen again". Ravenstone Castle near Whithorn in Galloway is now a ruin, but there is a Bed and Breakfast of the same name in Harvard, Illinois in which "Sir Peter the Cat reigns supreme".

Stock no. ebc7927