Goodbye, Mr Chips

HILTON, James

Goodbye, Mr Chips

London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1934

Crown 8vo., original bright blue publisher’s boards, lettered typographically in gilt to upper cover and backstrip with publisher’s name and device to foot; decorative endpapers with banners featuring Latin phrases from the Aeneid (“O Mihi Praeteritos Referat si Jupiter Annos” and “Haec Olim Meminisse Juvabit”); together in the original publisher’s blue and black printed dustwrapper, priced 5/- net to spine; pp. [vi], 7-127, [i]; featuring four full-page captioned illustrations as well as two vignettes in black and white; the boards clean and bright with a little pushing to spine tips; internal text block with some scattered foxing throughout, but mostly affecting the prelims and the outer edges of the text block; previous owner’s name in blue biro to ffep; the wrapper good, though darkened to the panels and folds; ‘S.S’ written in blue ink to front flap, and perhaps most significantly wear, tearing and chips to outer edges and along spine; reinforced internally with tape and stickers. 

First UK edition, preceded by the U.S. edition the previous year which was unillustrated. This copy containing the clipped inscription to the half title: “For Mr[?] D. Rebbeck with good wishes from James Hilton Hollywood October 1947.” Hilton had moved to California in 1938, at which point his work became more connected with the Hollywood film industry. A laminated photograph from the 1969 film is also loosely laid in. 

Born in Lancashire in 1900, James Hilton completed his secondary school years at the Leys School in Cambridge, a private boarding and day school which later formed the basis for Goodbye Mr. Chips!. Together with his father (who was a headmaster at a Chapel End School in Walthamstow), the inspiration for the titular character came in the form of William Henry Balgarnie, under whom Hilton studied between the years of 1915-1918. Balgarnie was formative for the young writer, and was responsible for publishing Hilton’s first stories in the Leys Fortnightly. A rather strict disciplinarian, Balgarnie nonetheless was fond of his wards, and frequently invited them for tea and biscuits. “When I read so many other stories about public school life, I am struck by the fact that I suffered no such purgatory as their authors apparently did”, Hilton wrote upon Balgarnie’s death in 1951. “Much of this miracle was due to Balgarnie." 

The book was subsequently adapted twice for film, the first in 1939 and the second in 1969, when it was transformed into a musical starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark, with an underscore by John Williams.

Relatively scarce signed.