The Memorial.

Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions,, 1946. First US edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "For John Collier, invaluable companion and admired colleague, in tragedy and farce, sickness and health - Christopher, January 1947". An author and screenwriter, Collier was a close friend of Isherwood's when he first moved to America; Collier wrote the screenplay for the 1955 film I Am a Camera, based on Isherwood's Berlin Stories. The pair first met in February 1945 at Warner Bros, where they were both working as script writers; in his memoir, Lost Years, Isherwood describes Collier as his "particular friend" at the studio. "Everyone who tried to describe John ended by using the same image: a toby jug. He was small and square, with close-cropped hair, a bright red face and round bulging blue eyes. His expression was humorous and yet oddly ferocious; in his youth he had been a boxer. He was British, through and through... Collier did all his script writing at night; he couldn't work in the daytime. Since writers were required to keep office hours, Collier passed the time in gossip and occasional drinking. This made him a perpetual temptation to Christopher, to drop work and join him." The two writers attempted, unsuccessfully, to adapt Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone for the screen, and often joked about rewriting the ending of Proust's Recherche: "Having been led to believe that Charlus, Saint-Loup, Jupien and the rest of them were homosexuals, the reader would discover that he had been deceived - their real guilty secret was that they were all in show business. They could not admit to this because, in their social world, show business was regarded as the vilest possible way of life." Octavo. Original burgundy cloth, spine lettered in gilt on black ground. With dust jacket. Cloth lightly marked; jacket a little rubbed and faded, extremities slightly chipped with some tape reinforcement to verso, unclipped: a very good copy in very good jacket.