THE SONG OF ROLAND Done into English, in the original measure by Charles Scott Moncrieff, With an Introduction by G. K. Chesterton, and a Note on Technique by George Saintsbury

Unique association copy, inscribed on the free front endpaper and dated 1919 by Moncrieff to Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde's youngest son. Besides being professional colleagues, in that they both were world-class translators, they shared an intimate correspondence that has been recently discovered. What's more, this copy is extraordinary in that its error (page 128, line 7 "Sones fell Gue.") has been personally emended correctly by Moncrieff (with a transposing line in ink notation) to "So Guenes fell.". At the bottom of page 129, across from the point of issue, as it were, at the conclusion of the work, Moncrieff has written his signature in the same ink. Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (1889 - 1930) was a Scottish writer and translator, most famous for his English translation of most of Marcel Proust's opus, which he published under the Shakespearean title "Remembrance of Things Past" beginning in 1922 until his death. Moncrieff served in the British forces in World War I. A brief affair in 1918 with poet Wilfred Owen led to a bitter dispute with Osbert Sitwell. Among Moncrieff's social friends was Noel Coward. Vyvyan Holland (1886 - 1967), English author and translator, was the second-born son of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. Like Moncrieff, he, too, was commissioned to serve in WWI. After the biography of Moncrieff, "Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C K Scott Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator", by Moncrieff's great-great-niece Jean Findlay, was published in 2014, Findlay revealed that she had "discovered 458 pages of letters and postcards to Vyvyan Holland, the translator, and son of Oscar Wilde. These spanned from 1910 to Charles's death, his whole adult life. They are witty and frank full of Rabelaisian adventures, homosexual badinage, gossip, limericks and the detail of his thoughts and feelings on every activity, especially his sexual affairs. Vyvyan was the one person to whom Charles revealed his sex life; in the absence of these letters I had believed that after the war he was celibate. The letters proved that he practiced an exuberant sexuality even until his final illness. To escape being compromised, the letters are in French, Italian, Latin, Greek and German." (source: FSG WORK IN PROGRES) . 8vo, light red linen, paper spine label, xxii, 131. cloth slightly faded at top and bottom of covers, spine a tad darkened, title faded from spine label. This copy - inscribed, signed, issue point corrected by author, and, with historical retrospection, a revelatory association - is sui generis, indeed.