MY LIFE AND SOME LETTERS

Second edition. Signed by the author. Publisher's original navy blue cloth with gilt titles to the upper board and spine. With a photogravure frontispiece and 40 further illustrations on art paper throughout the text. A near fine copy, the binding firm with a little bumping at the tips of the slightly rolled spine, the cloth and gilt bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout.

Signed and inscribed by the author in blue ink underneath the portrait frontispiece "Mrs Patrick Campbell / (Beatrice Stella Cornwallis West) / Dec 1st 1923". Uncommon thus. The autobiography of Mrs Patrick Campbell (1865–1940), one of the leading British stage actresses of her generation, celebrated for her striking beauty, quick wit, and fiery temperament. She made her stage debut in 1888 and achieved her first major success in 1893 as Paula Tanqueray in Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Two years later, she starred opposite Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, beginning a long and successful stage partnership. Campbell went on to deliver acclaimed performances in some of the most important roles of the period. In 1907, she gave a memorable portrayal of Hedda in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and in 1914 she originated the role of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, which her close friend George Bernard Shaw wrote specifically for her. Her first marriage, to Patrick Campbell, ended with his death in 1900, although she retained the name by which she became widely known. In 1914, she married George Cornwallis-West, a writer and soldier who had previously been married to Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill.