First trade edition, first impression. A superb presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the secretary and clerk at the Hogarth Press on the front free endpaper, "Peggy Belsher, with thanks for all she has done, from Virginia Woolf Oct. 8th, 1931." Belsher, who worked at the Hogarth Press between 1928 and 1936, later recalled how Virginia Woolf would sometimes "come into the office to help with tying up parcels", and the illustrator Richard Kennedy noted that "Mrs W. is a pretty fast worker considering she's not a professional like Miss Belcher [sic] and myself." Woolf was fond of the attractive young secretary; she wrote to her after she left, "I always meant to say how sorry I was that you were going – if for no other reason than you were always so kind to me." In July 1935 when Peggy married a clerk in the customs office, the Woolfs went to tea with the newlyweds and were given a tour of the house. Virginia noted that the young people lived more comfortably than her own parents had lived at Hyde Park Gate 50 years earlier. Woolf found her "quite on top of the situation. Patted my shoulder. No snobbishness. No sense of class differences. And science has helped them to electric toasters."
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