Beschreibung:

GREENE (GRAHAM)The End of the Affair, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on front free endpaper "For "you"/ with thanks for all your labours./ From Graham Greene", with pencil annotation in another hand on p.122 (the words "Not me!!", written in the margin alongside the phrase "All the secretaries used those unbearable initials", which is underlined in pencil), slight browning to endpapers and adjoining pages, publisher's cloth, dust-jacket (slight creasing at top edge with one short tear in corner) [Wobbe A27a], 8vo, Heinemann, 1951FootnotesPRESENTATION COPY TO "YOU", PRESUMABLY GREENE'S SECRETARY DORIS YOUNG.
It seems natural to assume, from the mention of "all your labours" in the inscription, and from the pencil annotation, that the recipient of this copy was Doris Young, Greene's secretary in the early 1950s. She apparently came to Greene from Harry Walston, husband of Greene's lover Catherine Walston, the book's dedicatee, and in 1958 was replaced by Josephine Reid, about whom more has been written.
Nonetheless, the use of "For 'you'" suggests a level of intimacy with the recipient, similar occurrences of the phrase usually having been associated with Greene's lovers. As it happens our copy surfaced at auction in 1984 (Sotheby's, 6 December, lot 201), with the recipient unidentified, and another presentation copy of the book was also sold at Sotheby's that year, this time inscribed fully ("For Doris Young with many thanks for your help, from Graham Greene"). So, intriguingly, the present copy is either one of two copies Greene inscribed to Doris Young, or it was inscribed to someone else who helped him with the book. The significance of a pencil note on the rear paste-down, "211. Bexhill!", possibly in the same secretary's hand, is also unclear.