The Devil in a Nunnery and Other Mediaeval Tales.

First edition, first impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "H. Ward from the Author, 23.IV.1915". Author Francis Oscar Mann, who was most well-known for the Albert Grope books, graduated from Balliol in 1909, and was immediately appointed a junior inspector of the Board of Education, in 1914 he was promoted to inspector, transferring to the Ministry of Munitions - far from Minor Equipment - in 1915, and to the Ministry of Labour in 1919, where he served until he returned in 1922 to Education. He edited an edition of the works of Thomas Deloney for the Clarendon Press in 1911, and published some volumes of poetry in the 1920s, but it was with Albert Grope that he "made his mark" (obituary, The Times, 28 June, 1935). At his death he was only 49, and "a colleague" contributing an appreciation to Mann's obituary remarks on his "robust good sense, his unfailing wit and cheerfulness which flashed and sparkled with effortless gaiety and charm and which it was hoped would sooner or later find adequate expression in his novels and poetry. Alas, successful as Albert Grope was, this will never be: if ever there was a man who was clearly greater than anything he wrote it was F.O.M." A lovely copy in the uncommon dust jacket.