The Outbreak of War, 1914. BENSON (E. F.)

EDWARD VIII'S COPY

Eight photographic illustrations, including frontispiece.

First Edition. 8vo. [198 x 132 x 20 mm]. 168, [4] pp. Bound in the publisher's cream cloth, lettered in gilt in red compartments, plain endleaves and edges. (Spine a little darkened and rubbed).

London: Peter Davies Limited, 1933

A book of no great value in itself, though E. F. Benson (1867-1940) was an author of note, best remembered for his Mapp and Lucia series of novels. It's interest lies in the provenance, as evidenced by the Sotheby's bookplate commemorating the September 11-19 1997 sale of properties belonging to The Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

This volume shows signs of use and would have been of great interest to the Duke. Born Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David on 23rd June 1894, his father, George V, is pictured on p.40 riding with his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II in Potsdam in 1913. Edward (or David as he was then known) was taught by private tutors before entering the Royal Naval College, Osborne in 1907. Two years later he moved on to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and then spent eight terms at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he left without a degree but he did learn to play polo. He joined the Grenadier Guards in June 1914, and visited the frontline trenches several times, for which he was awarded the Military Cross in 1916. In 1931 he met Wallis Simpson, who became his mistress in early 1934. He succeeded his father as Edward VIII on 20th January 1936 and abdicated on 10th December the same year. Six months later he married Wallis, who became the Duchess (but not a Royal Highness).

The Duke and Duchess resided in the Chateau Le Bois, or Villa Windsor, in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris from 1953 until the Duke's death in 1972, and the Duchess continued to live there until her death in 1986. The library remained untouched until the Sotheby's sale in 1997.

Stock no. ebc9313