Details
WHITE, T.H. The Witch in the Wood, London, Collins, 1940, 8°, FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED to John Arlott, 31 August 1957, with the embellishment of a heart with an arrow through it, and with an extensive note on front blank regarding the genesis of the book, title signed, head- and tail-pieces after White, original beige cloth (spine spotted, one corner bumped).
An important statement of intent, the 21-line author's note reads: "Dear John -- I always meant to tell the Arthur story in four books. As the first one was comical and the full story was a tragedy, I had to make a transition from comedy to tragedy. My first solution -- which is this book -- was to slide across by using Farce. All the critics -- who loathe anybody who does not write the same sort of book again and again -- fell upon it tooth and nail, which shocked and terrified me so much that I lost confidence and scrapped this version. In the final omnibus -- for which you supplied the title (The Sword Unsleeping) -- it is re-written as the Queen of Air and Darkness. Nearly all the farce has gone, in favour of a dead-pan picture of Gaelic beastliness, which was largely at the bottom of Arthur's doom. So this volume becomes a perfected curio, and, now that the howls of the critics have died down, I am not sure it was as bad as all that after all ...." (See illustration on back cover)
An important statement of intent, the 21-line author's note reads: "Dear John -- I always meant to tell the Arthur story in four books. As the first one was comical and the full story was a tragedy, I had to make a transition from comedy to tragedy. My first solution -- which is this book -- was to slide across by using Farce. All the critics -- who loathe anybody who does not write the same sort of book again and again -- fell upon it tooth and nail, which shocked and terrified me so much that I lost confidence and scrapped this version. In the final omnibus -- for which you supplied the title (The Sword Unsleeping) -- it is re-written as the Queen of Air and Darkness. Nearly all the farce has gone, in favour of a dead-pan picture of Gaelic beastliness, which was largely at the bottom of Arthur's doom. So this volume becomes a perfected curio, and, now that the howls of the critics have died down, I am not sure it was as bad as all that after all ...." (See illustration on back cover)