Beauvallet

London: Heinemann. Hardback. 244pp. Elizabethan historical romance and adventure. Fold-out pedigree. This unassuming third impression of the Popular Edition has been used as a kind of Georgette Heyer Commonplace Book. Throughout there are colourful snippets neatly stuck-in including parts of the Walter Lambert dust jacket and the dust jacket of another Georgette Heyer novel Simon the Coldheart who appears in the fictional pedigree. There are a map of Spain cut from a newspaper and a hand-drawn map colour of the Caribbean also glued to the prelims. The endpapers port a black and white portrait of Queen Elizabeth which appears cut from a magazine. Even the Newspaper map has another item neatly glued the back: a printed line drawing of a ship in full sail. There is also a personal ex -libris label with the name heavily inked out but I believe it to be Diana Mary Victoria Guthrie. Miss Guthrie lived in Bebington on the Wirral in Cheshire in the 1930s and was a university student. She notes the book was bought at Philips in 1934 and Philips had a large bookshop in Liverpool (where she may well have studied) as well at least one branch on the Wirral. I believe Miss Guthrie is also the person who tipped in all the wonderful additions as details on the newspaper have allowed me to date it to October 1936. The list of the titles has all the historical works ticked in pencil. Green cloth is faded and there are large splits to both side of the spine. Binding is firm but the backstrip is very fragile. Internally neat with the additional matter firmly adhering to the pages and all attached neatly and squarely. A fasinating copy originally owned by a dedicated reader. Very good copy . Hardback. 1933.