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A little more Albert Wainright

November 10, 2016, 2:15 am
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This gorgeous roundel is, of course, by the one and only Albert Wainwright, whose art work has appeared here on numerous occasions and about whom we published a book a while ago. My collaborator on that book recently sent me the photograph above of a new addition to his collection. I thought it would be a good opportunity to look through recent auction sales and, sure enough, Wainwright's work continues to be dribbled onto the market in the form of pages from his sketchbooks and folios. The pictures below are all from auction sales in 2016









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19th Century Lenormand Fortune Telling Cards

November 12, 2016, 3:29 am
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 Madame Lenormand was a fortune teller in the early 19th century who was wildly famous as these things go at that time! She was perhaps the best known fortune-teller of her day and her main stock in trade was cartomancy. On her death publishers of playing cards tumbled over themselves to offer Lenormand fortune telling decks. It isn't clear just how closely related, if at all, to the card she may have used, these 'gypsy' style decks were but they soon became a more or less uniform system. They are still popular today and have a much more 'storytelling' approach to telling fortunes than, say, tarot cards.

19th century decks are scarce and I was delighted to find this one the other day. A little research tells me that this was published by the German lithographic printer of playing cards, Berndard Dondorf and that this variation (with the dragon logo and BD in the top right corner of the cards) was printed from 1878 until the closure of the company in 1933. Beyond that, therefore, dating is a bit of a best educated guess affair. But, since you asked, I suspect this deck is 1890-1900.




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Films and Filming Magazine

November 15, 2016, 5:35 am
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Films and Filming which ran from 1954-1990 never made this claim for itself but no one can be in any doubt that this was a magazine for gay men when, for much of it's time such things were either illegal or in their infancy. Under the proprietorship of Philip Dosse and the editorship of Robin Bean (and others), the covers and coverage became more and more gay until it was barely possible to claim that these are even 'coded' for the eye of the closet homosexual of the day. No other supposedly mainstream magazine was going to give front cover status to Jarman's Jubilee and Sebastiane or Pink Narcissus. But they also managed to find an 'angle' on some otherwise unpromising titles; you might be wondering what little known independent gay film is illustrated  on the front of April 1973 (below), in fact this was the still chosen to illustrate Zeffirelli's Brother Sun Sister Moon. Full frontal male nudity was not unknown in a way that wouldn't be tolerated today even.

There is a very helpful paper on the history of Films and Filming by Maruo Giori at acedemia.edu, you have to jump through a few hoops to download it but it's worth it.

I rather liked this description of Robin Bean from someone who knew him a little on an online forum about the magazine "very mysterious, dressed in black, a cloak even, tended to and fawned over by various young men."












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1937 Post Office Recruitment Film

November 18, 2016, 2:31 am
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Thank you to Cosmo who, in the comments to the last post, provided a link to this little classic, a 1937 Post Office recruitment film made by the GPO Film Unit back in the days when all schoolboys spoke like cockney urchins and all managers like Prince Charles. I thought it was fun enough to deserve to be elevated from the comments and put here in plain sight!





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Book Catalogue Covers

November 18, 2016, 2:30 pm
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In the past we have had a look a the front covers of book catalogues by a number of different booksellers including, of course, Jacqueline Wesley. It's always interesting to see what images booksellers use to attract us in to their wares: I have had to make such decisions myself on many occasions and it is not always easy.

This small group came my way the other day, the first 5(ish) catalogues issued by Delectus Books; unlike many booksellers mentioned on this blog Delectus are still going strong and are now quite a dominant force in 'our kind of books'. This is their own description of themselves:

"Delectus began in 1988 and are now the world`s leading dealers and publishers of erotica, sexology and curiosa. In addition we now stock books on Judaica, Islam and the Middle East, Criminology, Law, Policing & True Crime, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Medicine & Health, Anthropology, Folklore & Ethnology (Latin America, Africa, Asia, Middle East, Ireland), Politics, Sociology, Education, Economics & Social History, Decadence, Literature, Poetry, Theatre, Symbolists, Surrealism & the 1890s, Occult, Astrology, Spiritualism, Theology, Theosophy, Drugs, Alcohol and Addiction, Gothic, Horror, Fantasy, Vampires & Werewolves and similar subject areas. Our current printed catalogue of Erotica & Sexology can be E-mailed on request. Please note we are an internet and mail order business only. We supply books to collectors, academics and institutions such as the British Library, The Wellcome Institute, The University of California and other libraries around the world. We also supply images, text, and film for magazine publication, TV and film and also provide research and information service for TV and Radio."

You can browse and/or search their stock from their current abebooks seller page.

It is traditional when flicking through old book catalogues to find a book whose price seems a 'steal' and sigh wistfully at what you might have to pay for it today. In this instance though we can be even more amused to discover a book in catalogue six from 1992 (14 years ago) which you might have bought for £20; a very scarce and small pamphlet of poems by Frieda Harris, the woman who created the artwork for Aleister Crowley's "Thoth Tarot". Then we discover that the same bookseller lists it again today (no way of knowing if it is the same copy) for £400. And who says that books aren't an investment!?

It is easy to be wry and cynical about such things of course but actually old book catalogues are invaluable, particularly within niche subjects and I have already found reference to four or five books here that I had never heard of and know I will have to track down in the near future.





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Halcyon by Pierre Herbart illustrated by John Harrison

November 19, 2016, 2:00 am
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Halcyon by Pierre Herbart, translated by Agnes Mackay and illustrated by John Harrison. Published by John Lehmann in 1948. Not a very valuable book but you can nearly always rely on John Lehmann for quality. I didn't buy this in the end, but now that I look back at the quick snaps I took of the illustrations I begin to wish I had. So apologies for the phone-quality photographs... another one that got away...




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Hamlet by Twins in the 1970s

November 19, 2016, 3:00 pm
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I mentioned that we might be seeing more from Films and Filming; in their day they represented a gay 'eye' looking at the cinema of the time and so today they are great for discovering little-known films from the period that still have some resonance today. This page (below) for example which introduced me to a version of Hamlet from 1976, directed by Celestino Coronado and produced on a budget of £2,500 with just six onscreen actors, two of whom, twins Anthony and David Meyer, played Hamlet. Of the other four you may know at least two others: Helen Mirren and Quentin Crisp. Of course, Youtube comes to the rescue once our interest has been piqued. It's a uniqely 1970s production with near naked twins (Hamlet's two 'sides') cavorting with each other throughout and also playing both Hamlet and the ghost of Hamlet's father in an extended opening scene. The posing-pouched wrestling match between the two Hamlets towards the end throws shade on Oliver Reed and Alan Bates!



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1950s Scout Magazine

November 20, 2016, 5:00 am
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The illustrator Pierre Joubert and the photographer Robert Manson pretty much had the image of the Scoutisme movement in France sewn up between them in the early and mid-twentieth century. These late 50s covers for Scout magazine show just how design conscious the movement was and how, though cheaply produced, they managed to create an image for scouting which was then completely contemporary and now, deliciously retro.











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Theodore Wratislaw. Fragments of a Life

November 21, 2016, 2:25 am
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Theodore Wratislaw. Fragments of a Life by D. J. Sheppard. With this publication from Rivendale Press one of the last obvious biographical holes of the 1890s is finally plugged. Wratislaw was one of the few great names of the 90s still crying out for a full-length treatment. I haven't yet read the book so this can't be a review but there is a lot of buzz around the book and it's all good so I can't wait to get my teeth into it. If you can't wait either then you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk (NOT .com) or direct from Rivendale. Here is the blurb:


Theodore Wratislaw is one of the most biographically elusive figures of the ‘decadent’ 1890s. Though invariably named in accounts of the period, he remains a marginal figure, crowded out by more notorious contemporaries. When noticed, it is usually as an imposter who, whilst adopting the decadent – and, on occasion, homoerotic – pose in his poetry, lived the convention-bound life of a civil servant. The accusation of insincerity has stuck, and had a deleterious impact on the assessment of his work.

As the present volume reveals, however, the accusation is based on a mistaken view of his life. Contrary to John Betjeman’s assessment of the ‘buttoned up figure obviously longing to burst out of his narrow neatness,’ Wratislaw’s struggle was to maintain some semblance of bourgeois respectability rather than to escape it. Besides recurring mental illness, he experienced trials and tribulations in his private life on a scale to rival almost any of his peers included amongst Yeats’s ‘tragic generation.’

Hardback: 15.6 x 23.4 cm., 296 pp. 15 black and white illustrations
ISBN 978 1 904201 23 4
£40.00 / $50.00

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Todd Pratum's Collages

November 22, 2016, 1:28 pm
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Bookseller Todd Pratum makes collages out of spare scraps of book  paper. From what he says, I don't think he would claim any great art in them but I have been rather enjoying looking through them... See a larger selection at his website here.





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Films and Filming: Second Haul

November 25, 2016, 3:06 am
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Strange to say that two days after I came across the first pile of Films and Filming magazines blogged a few days ago, I was in yet another bookshop and there was another small selection. There will be more to come from the insides of some of these in the coming days and weeks I'm sure.







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Fernando illustrates Lost Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson

November 25, 2016, 3:54 am
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I must have read my way through every last book in Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai series when I was a teenager or close enough. Even at the time I think I realised that the military strategy that formed the centrepiece of the books and made The Dorsai into the most formidable fighting force in the known galaxy was pretty hazy... still, they were a good read. So I was intrigued to come across this Ace Books edition of Lost Dorsai which is really packed with black and white illustrations. The artist is credited only as Fernando, but I suspect this is Spanish comic book artist Fernando Fernandez. For the most part they are fairly standard 1970s/80s comic book stuff but there's a significant number that show a real sophistication, which tickle my love of inky black and white mark-making, and which seem to stand at a real junction between the psychedelic 70s and the over-glamorised 1980s.









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Austin Osman Spare at Atlantis Bookshop

December 5, 2016, 12:30 pm
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The venerable but never stuffy Atlantis Book Shop in London, right by The British Museum is currently hosting an exhibition to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the death of Austin Osman Spare, artist and occultist. It is only on until the 18th of this month and being in the basement of a bookshop with an entry fee of a fiver, it is not the big, fancy London exhibition that it should be, but it is done with love and enthusiasm. It seems too, that this is the way Spare might have liked it: he spent most of his life avoiding the bright lights and big budgets of the London art world, which the quality of his work fitted him for, preferring instead to exhibit in pubs and to keep his secrets. 

There is barely an image or object here in this exhibition that doesn't speak to how astonishing this man was. The humble oil painting 'Self Portrait as a Magician' painted in his early 20s, shows a beautiful young man with an intense gaze and an ability to choose just a very few symbolic items to economically represent himself. The self-portraits from later life show a man who has lost none of the intensity of youth. The image above might not be the best choice for the cover of a program but in the flesh the two white specks in his eyes draw the viewers eyes into a netherworld behind the face. Spare's portrait of Crowley, his lover for a while, done from a photograph, is one of the many images that just leap from the wall: Spare draws Crowley's eyes as entirely black and it makes an intriguing contrast with the light in his own eyes. The paintings and drawings that come from Spare's magical work are compelling too as a kind of self-portraiture, a self-portrait of the very deepest recesses of a mind at its most atavistic.

As well as the artwork, the exhibition has two large cases of letters, artifacts and ephemera and it is here that glimpses of AOS's mind can be seen at work in a different way. There is a letter in which he requests the loan of one of these new-fangled "biros" for his "automatic work", presumably he had heard how a ball point pen glides smoothly across paper and wanted to harness that quality in his automatic drawing. As well as little insights of that kind there is also the opportunity to see his sketches and scribbles and manuscript writings, adorned as they are by the magical sigils that he reinvented as a part of his magical system, and one is struck looking at them that here is the very beginning of a hundred websites and probably more books all following his style. 

The exhibition is a must-see for anyone with an interest in outsider art, in 20th century art, or in 20th century occultism.



 


 

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The Quite Difficult Book Quiz

December 9, 2016, 4:43 pm
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2016 has been a pretty shit year in lots of ways. I studiously avoid politics on this blog but it can't be denied that this year has brought some fairly dismal surprises for anyone of a liberal and open mind. Alongside all that there has been a daily procession of abject misery on our screens from new kinds of wars across the world and with new kinds of displacement effecting millions of people, many of them here in Europe and nearby. A host of deaths of people who have been instrumental to shaping the culture of our times up to this point has perhaps only strengthened the sense that this year has been something of a tipping point.

Like so many others I have been asking myself, what the hell can I do? and it often feels like not a great deal. That said, I decided to try and do one positive thing before 2016 is out and so, returning to our shared life in books I have created The Quite Difficult Book Quiz. It's a traditional time of year to be doing in depth quizzes in the dark evenings (at least in this hemisphere) and if you would like to help, this is how.

1. Visit my Just Giving page: www.justgiving.com/bookquiz

2. Make a donation of any amount you can manage, large or small, to Firefly International, a charity who work with children and young people from Bosnia, Palestine and Syria: a small charity, underwritten by UK charity law and making a difference by partnering with local groups in those places.

3. You will then receive an automated thank you message with a link to a quiz.

4. The quiz has 100 questions designed to be not immediately accessible through our friend Google. There are 10 groups of 10 questions on all manner of fiction books and authors. Print it out. Keep it by the comfy chair, have a go at a few more questions every time there's a lull in the seasonal conversation.

5. You have until midnight on 31st December to get a list of your answers back to me and I will mark them, and the winner will receive a bundle of not very valuable but interesting books.

Just the smallest amount would be very welcome. The quiz has been running since the beginning of the month and as you will see, at the time of writing we have already raised over £280 which I am really very chuffed about.

Whether you are able to participate yourself or not, please consider blogging, tweeting or facebooking the details or just suggesting it to any bookish friends.

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London Gay Pride: 69 Stonewall 79

December 10, 2016, 7:21 am
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Book Ephemera #1: Cassell and Grant Richards

December 11, 2016, 2:30 am
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In the course of many years of book-life I have accumulated quite a pile of ephemera that relates to books and publishing. This is the first of what is going to be an ongoing series of posts on this theme: little bits and pieces of the book trade...

So for our first exhibits we have two publisher's bookmarks (obviously a very common form of ephemera to do with books!). The top one is a double sided bookmark from Cassell showing how they advertised some of the many periodicals for which they were known during the turn of the last century period. And below, another bookmark, issued by Grant Richards, and advertising a book and by an author, Oddly Enough by John Ressich, both of whom seem to have fallen off the edge of the internet in terms of information. 



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Vintage Swimwear...

December 13, 2016, 11:04 am
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The other day I started another occasional series for the blog: Book Ephemera and I numbered it #1. The other occasional series is Things That Fall From Books which I think is now up to #19. I can't imagine how many posts have been headed something like "Vintage Swimwear": perhaps it was good I never started numbering them!

Looked at the bottom photo of this offering for ages before realising that the two guys between them have just three legs!






 




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To the Mothers of the Eagles...

December 14, 2016, 7:56 am
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I have found many things inside books but perhaps nothing quite as haunting and moving as this long letter from the mother of a dead RAF officer in WW2. She is writing, on the day of his burial in the US, to the mothers of the American pilots heserved with and one whom he is to be buried with. The letter has no provenance, nor does the book in which it was found offer any clues. It really needs no further commentary from me...


         To the Mothers of the Eagles,
         My Folk have gone. I sit alone waiting for the hour when my son and one of your sons pass from our sight to consecrated ground.
         I feel you would like to know something of him as a personality, and something of why we, his British mother and his British wife, with freedom of choice for his last resting place have chosen that American corner of Holy Ground.
         One reasons is out Stanley had, not only a personal affection for, but the greatest pride in "this grand bunch of lads" - his own description. they lived together, played together, fought together, and with one of them he died. The few months he had the proud privilege of wearing the American Eagle on his sleeves were the happiest in his life.
         But there was a deeper reason. Death recognizes no nationality. The cause for which both gave their young lives knows no nationality they died that every man of every race may have the chance of freedom to develop individually. Presently that last sad bugle call "The Last Post" will ring out and echo through the surrounding hills. Today it will convey neither sadness nor finality for it submerges the dread clank of fetters and the crack of the slave whip. His spirit will soar to battle on the wings of an Eagle. 
         Stanley was tall, over 6ft, fair with deep set blue eyes, a large fine cut aquiline nose and pointed chin. there is a profile photograph in which, with the nose, the pointed chin and the steadfast eyes, he is not unlike an Eagle.
         He was a happy, merry lad who teased, never unkindly always mercilessly. Your lads and he teased each other played like children, and when an order came through for a dangerous job, soared to fly together through a barrage of fire so intense none had a right to survive and come home scathless laughing in the joy of achievement.
         Is it to be wondered that in October they were, in results, the leading squadron in the Command? Four D.F.C.s in one squadron! and D.F.C.s are not to be picked like blackberries. His last letter to me spoke of a longing for a "really good show" he was so sure of them.
He joined the R.A.F. in 1936. In 1938 he was a leader in the squadron - the famous 74 - that won the Sassoon trophy for the best fighter squadron of the force - The 74 - led so gallantly and victoriously by Malan in the Battle of Britain. 
         But when September 1940 came he was on other work - ground duties - but work that gave the finest training for leadership in battle - he was not happy in those days. I can still see a weary young face and hear a tired voice "Mother! to be held down by work an older man should do!" But there was at that time no older man with the necessary experience else so fine a pilot would never have been tethered in that hour of our desperate need. 
         In April, at his own urgent wish he was released for flying duties. "I feel years younger already" he writes and from that hour life was just happiness. He was leading constantly in operational flights, and in July won his D.F.C. not for the number of kills, but for "enthusiasm and skill" in leadership.
On August 9th he married - a wonderful union of two young idealists. He not only deeply loved, he revered his bride. I can see them now, two lovely children in an old, old country church, fragrant with banks of flowers. They stand together before the officiating priest, a shaft of sunlight streaming straight down upon them, waiting while the clear boys' voices of the choir sing the second verse of the song she had chosen for her entrance.

"Bring me my Bow of Burning Gold
Bring me my Arrows of Desire
Bring me my Spear! Oh! clouds unfold
Bring me my Chariot of Fire.
I will not rest from mental strife
nor will me sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land."

         The vow of service before the sacrament of earthly union.

        August 9th to November 15th so brief a glorious hour! Stanley was an idealist.

         In May 1940 he wrote to me: 
         "The invasion of Norway and Holland and Belgium with the pitiful stream of refugees, the despair and the destruction drives home to one the truth of what we are fighting for. I feel that this war will strike to the hearts of each one of us, and that we shall have, not only our backs to the wall but out very souls at stake. But the hardest battle will come when destruction has destroyed itself and we have to rebuild the world. Remould it nearer to the heart's desire. We shall have to fight then against the hate and fear this war is bound to raise to fever heat. We must keep our hearts clean from this and fight now with determination and courage tempered not by hate and fear, but with wisdom and truth."

          Another letter: 
         "Please have no fear for me. I know exactly where I stand. I have complete confidence in myself and come what may exactly where my duty lies." To this letter he adds as a postscript a quotation from The Light of Asia.

"By this the slayer's knife did stab himself
The unjust judge hath lost his own defender
The false tongue dooms its lie, the creeping thief
And spoiler rob, to render."
This is the Law which moves to righteousness
That none at last can turn aside or stay
The heart of it is Love, the end of it
Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey!" 



RIP Stanley
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Callum James Books: Occult Ephemera

December 17, 2016, 6:50 am
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I have just issued a short catalogue of ephemeral items relating to the occult. The list contains a little group of very diverse pamphlets and booklets on occult themes and then most of the rest is a catalogue of catalogues: a collection of bookseller's catalogues in the fields of magic, Wicca, mythology, folklore, the paranormal, cryptozoology, Eastern and Western occult philosophy and so on. There are a couple of items too which might be of interest to those who like supernatural fiction.

Book catalogues are always a great resource for the specialist collector as they often list books that one doesn't know one wanted. It is the next best thing to browsing an actual bricks and mortar specialist bookshop. Also, there is the bittersweet pain to be enjoyed of seeing the prices that even 30 years ago some of these books were selling for against what one would have to pay now.

We have often enjoyed the covers of book catalogues on this blog and occult booksellers clearly have lots of interesting imagery to choose from when designing their catalogues and so here is a little selection from the catalogue. You can view the whole thing here:


 









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Things That Fall From Books #20: Folk Magic

December 18, 2016, 3:02 pm
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Of course we are all used to the notion of birth stones now but I found it interesting that someone took the trouble to write out this list of stones for the months of the year with their supposed attributes. They suggest this particular list relates to Polish superstition in particular.

 





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