MARY STENTON, Doris. English Society in the Early Middle Ages. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1952. Reprint, 8vo (178 x 109mm.) (Toning to margins.) Original card covers (creasing to spine, minor soiling). Provenance: Raymond Redvers Briggs (name inscribed to the half-title) and dated 1953. - And two further paperback volumes published by Penguin Books, also with ownership signatures of Raymond Briggs. In 1953 Briggs would have been nineteen years old and in his last year of studying painting at Wimbledon School of Art. From 1953 to 1955 he was doing National Service with the Royal Corps of Signals. One of these paperbacks ('Tudor England' by S.T. Bindoff') has two signatures from Briggs, one dated 1953 and the other 1954. The latter one resembles his adult signature and by this time, into his second year of National Service, he has dispensed with the middle name (3).