Collection of 5 Uniformly Bound First Edition Titles by Ralph Nevill (1865-1930): The Merry Past (1909), Echoes Old and New (1919), Fancies Fashions and Fads (1913), Paris of Today (1924), and Night Life London and Paris--Past and Present (1926).

London: Various, 1909 This collection of Nevill's works was assembled by collector W.A. Foyle, and rebound uniformly in contemporary fine bindings of three-quarter blue morocco over blue cloth gilt, the spine with five raised bands, with titles and dates gilt, t.e.g. Bindings are not signed. CONDITION: Very Good Plus. All volumes show very minor wear to front joints, board edges and tips, and very minor foxing to some prelims. Hinges are in order. Otherwise clean, tight and bright. **"THE MERRY PAST," London: Duckworth & Co., 3 Henrietta Street Covent Garden, 1909, with tissue-guarded frontispiece, 306 pp. Index., First Edition. English manners and customs of the 18th century. OCLC 3822676.**"ECHOES OLD AND NEW," London: Chatto & Windus, 1919, First Edition. with 8 illustrations plus index. Part I: Somewhat salacious sketches of various 17th-century characters of France and England being bad boys abroad, with emphasis on the scandals: Henri II, Duc de Guise (1640-1644) and his actions in Naples against the Spanish following Masaniello's rebellion (a man described as "showing the same gaiety in the field of battle as he did in the ballroom." (p. 22); Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655); romances and other exploits of Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) in Paris ; Irish poet Thomas Dermody (b. 1775) his promise hobbled by alcohol; Milanese nobleman, traveller and diplomat during the French Revolution,Giuseppe Gorani (1740-1819); French general Henri de Harcourt, Comte de Lorraine (1601-1666); and finally a recounting of some of the famed cocottes of Paris, including the powerful and wealthy courtesan "La Pavia" (1819-1884). Part II: English social life and Customs. OCLC 489696. **"FANCIES, FASHIONS AND FADS" London: Methuen & Company Ltd., 36 Essex Street W.C. 310 pp. Tissue guarded frontispiece plus addtl. illustrations. Critique on the characteristics of London's smart set, and descriptions of bohemian Paris café society. OCLC 4447673. **PARIS OF TODAY," London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, 3 York Street, St. James's SW1, 1924. A guidebook to the beaumonde and demimonde of Paris: life in the cabarets, cafés, gaming clubs and the world of high society and fashion,320pp. OCLC 937644624.**"NIGHT LIFE LONDON AND PARIS--PAST AND PRESENT, "London Toronto, Melbourne and New York: Cassell and Company, Ltd., "First published 1926." with 8 illustrations. 309 pp. Topics of these essays include the New Princes' Cabaret, Covent Garden a Century Ago, the Empire Music Hall Program 1894, Cafe de Mille Colonnes, gambling, Lord Henry Seymour, Galleries of the Palais Royal and Le Chat Noir cabaret, Paris. Illustrated. OCLC 1440480.**British AUTHOR Ralph Henry Nevill (1865-1930) wrote some 30 works. He is said to be, "by family tradition," the lovechild of Victorian British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Lady Dorothy "Dolly" Walpole Nevill ( W. Trotter, ODNB)(S. Weintraub, "Disraeli" 1993, pp. 427-30.) Disraeli was in his early forties, and Lady Dorothy a teenager, when they first met, but their friendship would span decades, and he was a regular fixture at her salons in Mayfair in later years, to which she also invited artists, writers, including Thomas Hardy, and a wide assortment of scientists, soldiers and even liberal politicians, if they gardened. She married a cousin, Reginald Henry Nevill, after "being caught in the summerhouse" with a colleague of Disraeli's. The man refused to marry her, despite ruining her reputation with a ten-day elopement to Brighton. Lady Nevill bravely lived down theses and other scandals (father's gambling). It is really worth noting, however, that Lady Nevill accomplished a number of remarkable achievements. She was the lead horticulturist (with more than 30 gardeners) at the family estate of Dangstein in Sussex. There, a collection of 30 glass houses nurtured what has been described as one of the most extraordinary horticultural collections in private hands in the United Kingdom at the time. (Dr. David Marsh, The Gardens Trust, 2016.) The collections of rare plants brought the attention of Darwin, as well as Thomas and Edward Hooker of Kew Gardens fame. Lady Dorothy was also a founding member of the woman's branch of the conservative Primrose League, (named after B. Disraeli's favorite flower.) The Tory political action group of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was formed to counteract the growing trades union movement. Ralph Nevill also assisted his mother in writing several volumes of memoirs. Ralph Nevill's leaning-in to the scandalous in the above volumes of social history would seem to be, perhaps, an attempt to come to grips with both the advantages and disadvantages of his own patrimony, amplified by a contemporary taste for themes of the Decadent in art and literature beginning in the 1850's and 60's as seen in the works of Gaultier, Beardsley, the Symbolists and others. **PROVENANCE: Each volume bears the red gilt leather book label of W.A. Foyle founder of Britain's W.A.Foyle Bookshops and once housed at his converted monastery home of Beeleigh Abbey. For more detail on the Disraeli-Nevill connection, see biographer Stanley Weintraub's "Disraeli," Truman Tally Books, Dutton, New York, 1993.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good Plus.