Decline and Fall - An Illustrated Novelette - Evelyn Waugh 1928 - Chapman &, London - First Edition, First Issue ‘Anarchic and experimental... Surely one of the wittiest and most original of first novels. Champagne to the particular.’ - Cyril Connolly, The Modern Movement.

First edition, first issue, of Evelyn Waugh’s first novel. Illustrated with six full-page line drawings by Waugh.

After the book was rejected for indecency by the publisher of his earlier biography of Rossetti, Waugh offered the manuscript to Chapman & Hall, but he did so while his father, who was the managing director of the firm, was away on holiday. The acting-director agreed to publish the novel. Arthur Waugh returned to London to discover that his son was his firm's newest author. When Arthur Waugh's biography was published three years later, however,
Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, the two novels published under his directorship of Chapman & Hall, were not mentioned. The indelicate material, which Martin Stannard has since revealed in fact did go through some "taming" revisions, was perhaps a bit too much for the elder Waugh.
  Reference: Connolly, The Modern Movement 58.

First edition, first issue points - page 168 line 15 with
Martin Gaythorne-Brodie and page 169 line 4 with Kevin Saunderson , in the second issue these were changed to The Hon. Miles Malpractice and Lord Parakeet respectively.

Octavo (book size 19.3x13.2cm), pp. xii 288. In publisher’s red and black snakeskin-patterned cloth, spine lettered in gilt.
  Condition: Near fine, light foxing to pages and edges, spine gently toned but with bright gilt lettering.   Ref: 110838   Price: HK$ 9,500