Signed to an artist friend 'The Life of Alcibiades', E. F. Benson, Ernest Benn, 1928. 1st ed. 324 pp. Brown cloth, few insignificant marks, but good order. Internally, very good, few spots of pale foxing here and there. Map at beginning and end 'Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War'. Signed by Benson to the endpaper to G P Jacomb Hood, the artist who had illustrated Benson's previous historical novel set in the Greece War of Independence, The Vintage.[1898]. In Jacomb Hood's memoir 'With Brush and Pencil, published 1925, the artist describes a trip to Greece with Benson to research the locations. In later years when Fred was Mayor of Rye he chose Jacomb Hood's widow - who lived in the town - as his mayoress. Alcibiades was an Athenian military commander, who switched sides frequently due to his propensity to make enemies whichever side he was fighting on. Benson had always loved Greece and its history and he wrote the book at a time when he felt the literary climate was changing around him and his own novels were going out of fashion. He had no time for Virginia Woolf and the Moderns and was aware that he lacked the stellar talent of Kipling or Hardy. Feeling that if he was to make his mark he needed a new direction. He chose biography and in quick succession wrote books on Francis Drake, Magellan and this one on Alcibiades. A few years later he would write what is probably his best biography, that of Charlotte Bronte. To the biographies, he brought all his storytelling skills, and they remain vivid and compelling reads.