[Cover title:] Work for the Winter. More or less for Christmas.

Bookseller Notes

Presentation copy of this scarce pamphlet, inscribed by the author on the inside front-cover: 'To Robert, from Julian'. A smattering of poems printed as a Christmas greeting ('More or less' making dubious the dating of it to the end of one year or the beginning of the text) by the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell. A collection with a similar title, but differing contents, was printed at the Hogarth Press of his aunt and uncle in 1936. The author's promising career the verse here is impressive was curtailed by his participation as a volunteer ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War; he died from shrapnel wounds soon after his arrival at the Front. The tragedy set Virginia Woolf's mind back to the death of her brother Thoby a few decades earlier; his mother's hair reportedly turned white overnight in horror at the news.Scarce, 2 copies in UK libraries (the British Library and The National Trust) and a handful in the US.