Characters and Characteristics of William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic. by WHYTE, Alexander

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898.. Third edition. Pp.xlviii/328, occasional light spotting, ownership bookplate of Robert Nichols, Imperial College, Tokyo to front pastedown with his pencil signature above. Dark blue cloth with gilt decorated title to front and spine, boards slightly rubbed with wear to corner tips. A good tight book with an interesting provenance.** Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols (1893 –1944) was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, and a playwright.....He served in the Royal Artillery as an officer in 1914, in the fighting at Loos and the Somme. He was invalided out in 1916, after suffering from shell shock. He began to give poetry readings, in 1917. In 1918 he was a member of an official British propaganda mission to the USA, where he also gave readings. After the war he moved in social circles in London; Aldous Huxley became a long-term friend and correspondent, and Nichols wooed Nancy Cunard with sonnets, but married Norah Denny in 1922 at St Martin-in-the-Fields. From 1921 to 1924, Nichols was chair of English at Tokyo Imperial University, where he was an energetic lecturer and translator of the 17th century Japanese poet Chikamatsu Monazemon. Nichols eventually left Tokyo and moved to Hollywood, where he advised Douglas Fairbanks and wrote plays. When he returned to England, in 1926, Nichols continued writing, working for fifteen years on a never-finished epic about Don Juan. Portions of this work were published in Such Was My Singing (1942), a selection of his poetry. Nichols also edited the Anthology of War Poetry, 1914-1918 (1943). He died in Cambridge and was buried in Essex. .