short list 9.indd - Callum James Books

CALLUM James books
Short List #9
SEPTEMBER 2012
callum james books
Welcome to this short-list catalogue. Among other things, this list contains an important
collection of books by Edwin Emmanuel Bradford: a collection which can be traced back to
the Timothy d’Arch Smith collection of the 1970s and beyond. There is also a certain fragrance
added to the list by a number of books from that most peculiar of outfits, The Fortune Press. As
ever, it is our hope that most people will be able to find something of interest in our lists.
Callum James Books BUYS as well as sells. If you have a collection or even a single item that
you think might be of interest please do get in touch. Equally, we are keen to hear about the
reading and collecting habits of our customers so we can do our best to search out the kinds of
things that will be of interest.
To order, please email the address below in the first instance to reserve the item. We will then
confirm availability and give details of postage costs. Emails will be dealt with strictly in the
order in which they appear in our inbox. Payments can be made by Paypal to the email address below (you don’t need to have a Paypal account to use it to pay by credit or debit card),
or by sterling cheque, made payable to “S. Martin” and sent to the address below. Please send
no money until availability has been confirmed and the item reserved.
Cover: Andre Raffalovich’s bookplate designed by Eric Gill see item 3
31A Chichester Road
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UK - PO2 0AA
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Blog: callumjames.blogspot.com
1. BRADFORD, Edwin Emmanuel. Sonnets, Songs & Ballads. Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London: 1908. This is the only one
of Bradford’s volumes of verse not bound in burgundy cloth. There
is evidence that Bradford paid for the binding of his own books
and so presumably had the final say in how they looked. This copy
has a blindstamped title and author on the upper board and what
appears to be yellow, rather than gilt, titles on the backstrip. Other
copies we have seen are in a slightly lighter blue cloth with true gilt
stamping. This copy has what might be a water mark on the top left
hand corner of the front cover. This does not extend to the interior
of the book which is bright and clean. Three bookplates give the
book’s history on the endpapers. £85
The next five items were first offered for sale by Timothy d’Arch
Smith in 1972 in catalogue no. 3 of Michael deHartington
Booksellers, English Homosexual Poetry of the Nineteenth &
Twentieth Centuries. This catalogue was constituted of those books
which d’Arch Smith had collected as the basis of his research for
Love in Earnest (Routledge, London: 1971). They were offered as
items 11, 12, 13, 16 & 17 of that catalogue respectively.
2. BRADFORD, Edwin Emmanuel. The Romance of Youth. Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London: [1920]. This copy is
SIGNED by Bradford, “yours sincerely E E Bradford” which may
be an inscription to Eric J N Bramall whose ownership signature
is on the front endpaper dated 1924. Bramall appears to have been
a friend of the author and in the author’s
own copy of The True Aristocracy Bradford
records a comment by Bramall, presumably
from a letter, “your poetry has something so
delightfully fresh and natural about it, that
is so amazingly refreshing”. Also contains
the bookplate of Timothy d’Arch Smith and
Roger F Walker. £200
3. BRADFORD, Edwin Emmanuel. Ralph
Rawdon. A Story in Verse. Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., London: 1922. The
book contains a visual record of its history
on its prelims. This was once the copy
belonging to Marc-André Raffalovich (18641934), the French poet and art critic was an
early writer on homosexuality. Following his
conversion to Catholicism his understanding
of homosexuality as something akin to a
vocation brought him into conflict with the
early gay rights movement. Raffalovich’s
books were left to the Dominican Order of
which he was a tertiary. Thus, as well as the
bookplate designed by Eric Gill depicting
only a green serpent, knotted on itself, a
plate which Raffalovich reserved for his
books dealing with homosexuality, there is
also a bookplate designating this copy one of
the ‘Raffalovich Bequest’. The book passed
into the library of The Poetry Society and as
well as their paper bookplate there is also an
embossed mark on the front free endpaper.
Finally, the bookplate of Roger F Walker
also appears in the book. £260
1
2-6
4. BRADFORD, Edwin Emmanuel. The True
Aristocracy. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &
Co., London: 1923. Samuel Elsworth Cottam’s
copy with his pencil annotations to the poems.
Cottam was a friend of Bradford’s from their
undergraduate days at Oxford and later in their
clerical careers, they were curates together at
St George’s Anglican Church in Paris, just at a
time when it was being pushed somewhat ‘up the
candle’. Cottam was blunt in his assessments of
Bradford’s poetry both in praise and criticism. He
writes on the endpaper “B=beautiful” and, indeed,
we see that B marked in a number of places
throughout the book. On the other hand he could
be cutting and in a long note which replicates a
conversation between himself and Bradford about
the meaning of a single word he sums up by saying
“EEB has made one of his characteristic blunders”.
Cottam later wrote his own volume of pederastic
verse which was fairly derivative of his friend’s
work. This copy has the bookplate of Timothy
d’Arch Smith and also the bookplate of Roger
F. Walker. A note in d’Arch Smith’s hand on the
ffep confirms the attribution of the annotations to
Cottam. £230
2
3
5. BRADFORD, Edwin Emmanuel. Strangers and
Pilgrims. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.,
London: 1929. With the bookplates of Timothy
d’Arch Smith and Roger F Walker. Including
a 3pp ALS to the author’s niece, Cissy dated
1934. It is a charming letter in which Bradford
counsels Cissy never to turn up unannounced at
his Norfolk rectory since it is so isolated that there
is sometimes no way to provide enough food for
visitors and he talks to of being asked to sign a
couple of his books for the Queen. £260
5
6. BRADFORD, Edwin Emmanuel. Boyhood. Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London: 1930. With
the bookplate of Roger F Walker and the embossed
mark of the Poetry Society Library. £180
2, 4, & 5
7
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7. CARPENTER, Edward. The Intermediate Type. A Study of some Transitional Types of Men and Women.
George Allen & Unwin, London: 1921. Reprint. Contains papers entitled, ‘The Intermediate Sex’, ‘The
Homogenic Attachment’, ‘Affection in Education’, and ‘The Place of the Uranian in Society’. This was
genuinely pioneering stuff at the time of its first publication in 1908 and still at the time of this printing. A
very good copy in its scarce jacket. £25
8. CARPENTER, Edward. Anthology of Friendship. Iolaus. George Allen & Unwin, London: 1929. The classic
anthology of gay verse and prose arranged chronologically from the earliest pagan times through classical
civilisation and the Renaissance up to modern times. Very good in a very good jacket with a somewhat
browned spine. £20
9. CHUBB, Ralph Nicholas. Pencil Drawing of a nude youth lying prone. 25cm x 20cm. Graphite and coloured
pencil on paper. Signed R. N. Chubb and dated 1928. The signature has been over-written by the artist at a
later date. Some darkening to the paper and some foxing at the periphery not extending into the area of the
image itself and now covered by a conservation standard aperture mount. Provenance: bought from Muriel
Chubb, Ralph’s sister, in the 1970s. [Illustrated at the end of the list] £1,900
10. COTTAM, Stella M. ALS to Donald Weeks. Stella Cottam was the wife of Samuel Elsworth Cottam, an
Anglican clergyman, Uranian poet and friend to E. E. Bradford. The letter contains intelligence that Mrs
Cottam’s husband’s books were passed to his literary executor, L. A. Willoughby and provides his address.
It also mentions the difficulty in finding a publisher for a posthumous collection of her husband’s poems and
indicates that the cost of publication, eventually by Blackwells, was largely borne by his estate. The letter
concludes with the possibly erroneous news that Col. Radice has died and that his son is now a master at
Eastbourne College. The only Radice fitting that description did not, in fact, die until a few years later and
what his connection with S. E. Cottam may have been is still unclear. 2½ pp., dated 19th Jan 1961, includes
original cover addressed to Donald Weeks at his Detroit address before he moved permanently to the UK. £60.
11. D’OLBERT, Gervas. Chastisement Across the Ages. A Scientific Survey. The Fortune Press, London: 1956. A
little uneven fading to the red boards at their bottom edge. £10.
12. FOWKES, Aubrey. [pseud.] The Blue Marble. Fortune Press, London: 1965. It was Fowkes who wrote the
long-running and ever-popular series of diary-novels by A Boy for the Fortune Press, some twelve volumes
covering the years eight to nineteen. This is one of his slightly scarcer offerings in similar vein. £40
13. GRENVILLE-HEARNE, Grundy. Boy Sailors. Fortune Press, London: n.d. [1936]. Top right corner
somewhat bumped, interior pages a little marked here and there. Despite the rather documentary sounding title
this is, in fact, a novel. £28
16
13
18
12
19
14. HELIOPHILUS. Sea Visitors. OSP [Old Stile
Press], Llandogo: 1995. A long erotic poem,
and quite explicit, narrated by a man who, in a
secluded bay, comes across two naked youths.
He describes what happens as he watches the
activity they believe is unobserved. The text
is illustrated with five drawings by J.M.P. [J.
Martin Pitts], a long-time collaborator with the
press on such material. 16pp, laser printed onto
blue-grey paper and sewn into dark green paper
wrappers. One of the scarcer homoerotic items
published by the press. £45
18
from item 19
15. [LONDON] Victorian and Edwardian London
from old photographs with an introduction and
commentary by John Betjeman. A very good copy in
a very good, slightly worn jacket. £12
16. MUYBRIDGE, Eadweard. The Human Figure in
Motion. Dover Publications Inc., New York: 1955.
4to. 196 plates from the Muybridge collection. A
very good copy in a very good but slightly shelfworn
jacket. £15
17. QUINTERLEY, Esmond. [pseud.] Climbing Boy. The
Last Day in the Life of a Chummy in the Year 1750.
The Fortune Press, London: [1939]. Very good in a
price-clipped but otherwise very good jacket. £30
from item 14
18. ROLFE, Frederick. Tarcissus The Boy Martyr of Rome in the Diocletian Persecution AD CCCIII. The Victim
Press, London: 1972. This is a facsimile edition of Rolfe’s first separately published piece, the original of
which is now one of the rareissima of the book-collecting world. A small 10pp booklet glued into card covers
and, for once, in this copy, the glue has neither cracked nor browned. £20
19. SCARROTT, Michael. [pseud. for A. S. T. Fisher] Ambassadors of Loss. Fortune Press, London: 1955.
A scarce gay novel based in a boys’ school. The author writes a disclaimer that no real school is intended
but also that many of the incidents “are based on actual experiences of schoolboys, from widely different
schools, who have given me their confidence and encouraged me to write this book.” Please see the Front Free
Endpaper blog entry for 10th September for further discussion of this book. Distinguished by some interesting
b/w illustrations by B. H. Surie. Very good. £40
20. SYMONDS, John Addington. Fragilia Labilia. Thomas Mosher, Portland Maine: 1902 The original
publication of this short garland of poems was privately by Symonds himself in an edition limited to 25 copies
in 1884 “for the author’s use”. Always with an eye to the rare and otherwise unobtainable, the notorious
literary pirate Thomas B. Mosher, decided they would make an interesting addition to his list and reprinted
them here for the first time in 1902 on Kelmscott paper in stiff unprinted boards with a decorated, Art
Nouveau style wrapper. This copy has some light marks to the wrapper and a 1.5” tear at the top edge at the
back but the inside remains very bright and clean. £180
20
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