Some People.

London: Constable & Co. Ltd,, 1927. It is thus... in the mirrors of our friends that we chiefly live First UK edition, first impression, scarce in the jacket. This review copy, with the slip inserted and pencilled notes on the text on the rear free endpaper, is from the library of Charles Ballantyne, with his bookplate on the front pastedown. Virginia Woolf's laudatory review of Some People for the New York Herald Tribune provided the basis for her essay "The New Biography" the same year: "[Nicolson] has devised a method of writing about people and about himself as though they were at once real and imaginary... Some People is not fiction because it has the substance, the reality of truth. It is not biography because it has the freedom, the artistry of fiction. And if we try to discover how he has won the liberty which enables him to present us with these extremely amusing pages we must in the first place credit him with having had the courage to rid himself of a mountain of illusion... Indeed, by the end of the book we realize that the figure which has been most completely and most subtly displayed is that of the author. Each of the supposed subjects holds up in his or her small bright diminishing mirror a different reflection of Harold Nicolson... It is thus, he would seem to say, in the mirrors of our friends, that we chiefly live" (pp. 152-4). Ballantyne (1903-1985) was a Scottish collector whose interests included William Beckford, Walter Scott, and Aubrey Beardsley. Octavo. Original yellow cloth, spine lettered in black. With dust jacket. "Gullick" pencilled on rear of review slip. Spine cocked with faint ghosting from jacket, foot of spine and upper corners gently bumped, a few marks to front cover, a little spotting to edges, free endpapers toned. A very good copy indeed in sunned jacket, small chips and a few short closed tears to spine ends and corners, top edges creased, still a very good example. Virginia Woolf, "The New Biography", 1927.