212pp, with illustrated frontispiece. Orange cloth boards with gilt titles on spine. Decorated endpapers. 8vo. Cloth very slightly rubbed and rounded at corners else neat., clean, bright and tight throughout. Lender's stamps and markings on front endpapers and copyright page. In its original illustrated dust wrapper (protected with Brodart-style sleeve).
In 1891, Rosa Burley took over a finishing school in Malvern where the young, an almost unknown, Edward Elgar, was a visiting violin teacher. Despite a rocky first meeting, they became life-long friends with Burley supporting Elgar's career. But Burley was far from idolatrous and the portrait of Elgar which emerges from her account of their friendship is both intimate and candid.