WHAT I BELIEVE. [inscribed]
![WHAT I BELIEVE. [inscribed]](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/178/031/1703031178.0.x.jpg)
- SIGNED
- 1939
1939. [inscribed by E.M. Forster] London: The Hogarth Press, 1939. Original light green wrappers lettered in reddish-brown.
First Separate Edition, issued as "Hogarth Sixpenny Pamphlets | Number One" (the wolf's-head device on the title page is after a design by Vanessa Bell). Forster espouses humanism, tolerance and sensitivity at a time (with a war about to commence) when everybody else was shouting; this essay has resurfaced in recent years (see Rhian Sasseen, commenting on the dawn of the Trump era in 2016) as pertinent to our time. This essay, with some variations, had originally appeared as "Two Cheers for Democracy" in the 16 July 1938 issue of The Nation, and again as "Credo" in the September 1938 issue of London Mercury; it would later be collected with other papers in Forster's 1951 book TWO CHEERS FOR DEMOCRACY. Condition is near-fine (slight darkening and foxing on the wrapper). Kirkpatrick A20 (indicating "published early May 1939"). This copy is inscribed and signed by Forster on the half-title, "With all kind remembrances | from EMForster. | May 8th 1939. (Below this is penciled, by someone else, "inscribed to A.N. Partridge in month of pub.". A.N. was possibly someone connected to Frances Partridge (1900-2004), whose Hogarth-published diaries ran from 1939 through 1972; until her death at age 103, she was the "surviving member" of the Bloomsbury Group.).
First Separate Edition, issued as "Hogarth Sixpenny Pamphlets | Number One" (the wolf's-head device on the title page is after a design by Vanessa Bell). Forster espouses humanism, tolerance and sensitivity at a time (with a war about to commence) when everybody else was shouting; this essay has resurfaced in recent years (see Rhian Sasseen, commenting on the dawn of the Trump era in 2016) as pertinent to our time. This essay, with some variations, had originally appeared as "Two Cheers for Democracy" in the 16 July 1938 issue of The Nation, and again as "Credo" in the September 1938 issue of London Mercury; it would later be collected with other papers in Forster's 1951 book TWO CHEERS FOR DEMOCRACY. Condition is near-fine (slight darkening and foxing on the wrapper). Kirkpatrick A20 (indicating "published early May 1939"). This copy is inscribed and signed by Forster on the half-title, "With all kind remembrances | from EMForster. | May 8th 1939. (Below this is penciled, by someone else, "inscribed to A.N. Partridge in month of pub.". A.N. was possibly someone connected to Frances Partridge (1900-2004), whose Hogarth-published diaries ran from 1939 through 1972; until her death at age 103, she was the "surviving member" of the Bloomsbury Group.).