How to See Italy signed association copy Douglas Sladen first edition 1912

SLADEN, Douglas. How to See Italy. (Signed association copy with an ALS by the dedicatee).
 
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912.
 
8vo. 566 pages. Original maroon cloth gilt, decorated with a gilt wolf’s-head door-ring device to upper board, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt. Light offsetting to endpapers from prelims, otherwise a clean and bright, near fine copy. Presentation copy from Sladen to his wife, inscribed in pencil on the front endpaper.
 
Loosely inserted autograph letter signed from Sir Rennell Rodd on British Embassy, Rome, headed paper (27 October 1911), written to Sladen on receiving news of the dedication and expressing his pleasure and friendship.
 
Margaret Isabel Sladen (née Muirhead, d.1919) was his long-time companion and collaborator, accompanying him on his Continental travels. Contemporary reviews of How to See Italy and its companion volumes referred to “Mr and Mrs Sladen’s well-worn roads of travel,” attesting to her presence throughout the journeys that inspired his Italian books.
 
The inserted letter from Sir James Rennell Rodd (1858–1941), British Ambassador to Italy and poet-diplomat, corresponds directly with the printed dedication — “To that distinguished author… in memory of our friendship when we were undergraduates together at Oxford” — and provides a rare contemporaneous acknowledgment from the dedicatee.
 
A fine association copy uniting author, dedicatee, and travelling companion.