The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh. 1st Edition

MCMLVII CHAPMAN & HALL LONDON Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London Cat. No. 5133/4 First Edition Hardcover Dust Jacket The quality of the dust cover you can see on the photos. The book is tight and in a very good condition. It is clean, no marks, no tears, no bent corners on pages. Pictures are of actual item you will receive. Please check photos for details.

Description: London: Chapman & Hal, 1957; True First Edition (preceding the US Edition); Original dark blue cloth with bright gilt lettering to spine and blue tinted top page edge in graphic Dust Jacket; 184 pp. Waugh referred to this as his “mad book,” as it is an autobiographical account of his bromide intoxication and accompanying hallucinations.

Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban and, as it cruises towards Ceylon, rapidly slips into madness. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship . . . until instead of just sounds he hears voices. And not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frighteningly intimate way, about him! the innermost secrets of his heart.

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (1903-1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies and travel books. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer of books. Waugh is recognized as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.

Early in 1954, Waugh's doctors, concerned by his physical deterioration, advised a change of scene. On 29 January, he took a ship bound for Ceylon, hoping that he would be able to finish his novel. Within a few days, he was writing home complaining of "other passengers whispering about me" and of hearing voices, including that of his recent BBC interlocutor, Stephen Black. He left the ship in Egypt and flew on to Colombo, but, he wrote to Laura, the voices followed him. Alarmed, Laura sought help from her friend, Frances Donaldson, whose husband agreed to fly out to Ceylon and bring Waugh home. In fact, Waugh made his own way back, now believing that he was being possessed by devils. A brief medical examination indicated that Waugh was suffering from bromide poisoning from his drugs regimen. When his medication was changed, the voices and the other hallucinations quickly disappeared. Waugh was delighted, informing all of his friends that he had been mad: "Clean off my onion!". The experience was fictionalized a few years later, in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957).