8vo. xxxviii, 166pp. Title in red and black. With a portrait frontispiece and a further four plates. Handsomely bound by Harrison & Sons (stamp-signed on front turn-in) in contemporary gilt-tooled tan morocco, T.E.G., marbled endpapers. A trifle marked, spine dulled. Armorial bookplate of Anthony Eden to FEP.

The first edition of the collected works of poet Ernest Dowson (1867- 1900), handsomely bound by Harrison & Son, with tooling imitating the Art Nouveau pattern of the original publisher's cloth binding designed by Aubrey Beardsley.

Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British foreign secretary (1935-38, 1940-45, and 1951-55) and Prime Minister (1955-1957). Following active service in the First World War, Eden read Oriental languages at Oxford. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1923. In 1935 he was appointed foreign secretary, a position he resigned in 1938 to protest Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany. When Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, he was named secretary of state for war, and later during the Second World War once more served as foreign secretary. Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister in 1955. In 1956, his failure to respond effectively during the Suez Crisis, and the subsequent loss of party and public support, would ultimately lead to his resignation from office in 1957. He was knighted in 1954 and created earl of Avon in 1961.