8vo. [6], 271pp. Original publisher's green cloth boards lettered gilt with blind tooling. Boards are scuffed and marked, rolled spine ends fraying, with some staining. Decorative endpapers remain bright, with a little toning through the loosening page block. With an ink ownership inscription to the title page.

The first collected edition of E.F. Benson's short stories - some fact, some fiction - mostly melancholy human vignettes, some wistful, others woeful, with at least one pet portrait thrown in for good measure.

E. F. Benson (1867-1940) was an extremely prolific English writer, completing over fifty novels, four novel series, short stories, plays, biographies, and other non-fiction works on subjects as varied as golf and grave digging. His last work, his third autobiography, was delivered to his publisher just ten days before his death.