Moor Park Rickmansworth.

Presentation copy. Presentation copy, inscribed: 'To / Mrs Gordon Woodhouse / with best wishes from / Alvin Langdon Coburn / 6. VIII. 1916.'

Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (née Gwynne) was a renowned British keyboard player specialising in the harpsichord and clavichord and played a pivotal role in the revival of Baroque-era music and composers. After marrying Gordon Woodhouse, she convinced him to adopt the hyphenated name John Gordon Gordon-Woodhouse. The couple and three other men lived together in an unconventional arrangement known in society circles as the 'Woodhouse Circus.' Coburn photographed her on several occasions.

Alvin Langdon Coburn began photographing Moor Park and the surrounding parkland in 1906. He continued to do so over many visits to the eighteenth-century house where he taught photography to its owner, Lady Emile Ebury.

This book was due for publication in the spring of 1914 but was delayed by the outbreak of World War I. '"Nothing is coming out but war books at a cheap price." When it was finally published in November 1915 at five shillings, soldiers were already stationed at the estate, and the old order was changing. Moor Park was sold in 1919 to the industrialist Lord Leverhulme and is now a golf club' (Imagining Paradise).

First edition with the cancel title on a stub as issued, inscribed in black ink on the front free endpaper; 4to (227 x 181 mm, 9 x 7¼ in); 20 mounted photogravures printed by the Mezzogravure Company, London, introduction by Lady Ebury, afterword by William Temple printed in letterpress by Chiswick Press; plain endpapers, olive green paper-covered boards printed in black, light wear to extremities, an excellent copy; 56pp.