Waugh (Evelyn) Autograph Letter signed to Stanley Salmen, 2pp., 200 x 152mm., on paper headed Piers Court, Stinchcombe, Nr. Dursley, Glos., 22^nd December, 1953, discussing limited editions and the American publication of Love Among the Ruins, one horizontal fold.

⁂ An unpublished letter from Waugh to his American publisher.

Waugh began work on Love Among the Ruins in 1950, publishing it in the UK in 1953 after a rewrite brought about by a poor initial reaction from publishers. The UK edition comprised a limited edition of 350 copies (see lot ****) and a general trade edition. The book was poorly received by critics and Waugh would later write in a letter to Graham Greene in June 1953 that it "was a bit of nonsense begun 3 years ago & hastily finished & injudiciously published." This could explain Waugh's reticence in this letter in pursuing a separate American publication for the work, either as a limited edition: "The only point about a limited, numbered edition is that it should be scarce & that would-be buyers should be disappointed," or as a more general publication, commenting instead that "It might form part of a book of short stories..." Love Among the Ruins was never separately published in the US, but appeared in Tactical Exercise, a collection of short fiction by Waugh, in 1954.

Stanley Salmen was the managing director of Little Brown & Co., Waugh's American publisher at the time.