{"title":"LGBTQ+\/Queer","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"osborne-john-a-patriot-for-me","title":"OSBORNE, John A Patriot for Me.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOSBORNE, John\u003c\/strong\u003e A Patriot for Me. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Faber and Faber.\u003c\/i\u003e 1966.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original red cloth boards; spine lettered in gilt; illustrated dust-jacket with printed price of 13s 6d to front flap; pp. 128; light rubbing to to extremities and spine hinges on wrapper; very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition.\u003c\/strong\u003e Photograph on wrapper by 'Dominic'. A play in three acts. 'Mr Osborne's new play, presented at the Royal Court Theatre in July 1965 to members of the English Stage Society, shows how a young, able, and ambitious officer of the Imperial and Royal Army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was, through his homosexuality, blackmailed into becoming a spy for Tsarist russia' (\u003ci\u003eFaber and Faber\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2113476\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39955716014103,"sku":"2113476","price":60.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/products\/2113476.jpg?v=1647420425"},{"product_id":"douglas-lord-alfred-lyrics-inscribed-by-the-poet","title":"DOUGLAS, Alfred, Lord. Lyrics.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e'Far Be It from Me to Run Down Oscar Wilde' - Inscribed by Bosie\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDOUGLAS, Alfred, \u003ci\u003eLord.\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Lyrics. \u003ci\u003eLondon:\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eWestminster Press for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eRich and Cowan\u003c\/i\u003e. 1935.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher's blue cloth, upper board stamped in blind, spine lettered in gilt, in the very good, unclipped blue-green dust-jacket (7\/6 net), top-edge stained blue, the others untrimmed, partially unopened; pp. ii, 110, [2]; frontispiece portrait of 'Lord Alfred Douglas in his 24th year'; a few nicks to spine ends of jacket and to upper edges with corresponding sunning to cloth; slight offset to title; else a near-fine copy; front free endpaper inscribed 'Inscribed for G. Catalani by Alfred Douglas. April 1937' in green ink.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition thus of the collected lyric poetry of Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (1870–1945), a presentation copy 'inscribed for G. Catalani' in April 1937, containing the polemical 'Two Loves' used as evidence against Oscar Wilde in court and previously suppressed by the author.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of Douglas's homoerotic poetry was written between 1893 and 1896 and appeared in undergraduate literary journals such as \u003ci\u003eThe Spirit Lamp\u003c\/i\u003e, which he edited, and \u003ci\u003eThe Chameleon\u003c\/i\u003e, or in small-circulation magazines like \u003ci\u003eThe Artist\u003c\/i\u003e. Some of these poems appeared in a French edition of Douglas's verse in 1896, but most were not republished until the present \u003ci\u003eLyrics\u003c\/i\u003e of 1935, along with a companion volume of \u003ci\u003eSonnets\u003c\/i\u003e, which appeared in the same year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn contrast to the 'art-for-art's sake heresy […] promulgated by Oscar Wilde, who summed it up by saying that \"in all art style is of more importance than sincerity\", whereas I maintain that good poetry cannot be written without sincerity any more than it can be written without style […] Far be it for me to run down Oscar Wilde. I was the first to admire and pay homage to his genius and to put him in the very high place to which he belongs as a dramatist and a writer of prose […] Being essentially a great artist he lived to write one really great poem, \"The Ballad of Reading Gaol\" [\u003ci\u003ei.e. De Profundis\u003c\/i\u003e], which is an answer to and an implicit repudiation of his own heresy' (pp. 5–6). \u003cstrong\u003eThis collection features Douglas's 1892 'Two Loves' (pp. 56–58), featuring the line 'I am the love that dare not speak its name', weaponised against Wilde (along with his letters to Bosie) in his trials for 'gross indecency', as well as Douglas's own 'De Profundis', 'published in Poems (Mercure de France edition, 1896) and suppressed by [Douglas] in all subsequent collections' (p. 59).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2113572\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53478640583033,"sku":"2113572","price":500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2113572_e868a8fe-0dc5-41b7-9382-716cd5d03706.jpg?v=1787056701"},{"product_id":"isherwood-christopher-all-the-conspirators","title":"ISHERWOOD, Christopher. All the Conspirators.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eIsherwood Battles Chaotic Accordion Folder\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISHERWOOD, Christopher.\u003c\/strong\u003e All the Conspirators. [\u003ci\u003eGuernsey: the Star and Gazette Company for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eLondon: Jonathan Cape\u003c\/i\u003e. 1928.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. In an attractive modern binding of olive green morocco by the Brockman Bindery, Oxford, green endpapers, spine lettered directly in gilt, top-edge gilt, original endpapers bound in; pp. 255, [1 (blank)], first leaf blank; spine lightly sunned; some very occasional light foxing; a very good copy; presentation inscription to original front free endpaper ‘To the Governor | from his affectionate ex-secretary, | the author - | to remind him of happy days with the | mud-coloured file’, dated May 1928 (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Isherwood’s first novel, presented to ‘The Governor’, André Mangeot (1883–1970), the French violinist who gave Isherwood his first job as secretary to his string quartet; Isherwood lived at Mangeot’s mews house in Chelsea whilst writing this work.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIsherwood began work on \u003ci\u003eAll the Conspirators\u003c\/i\u003e, portraying generational struggle and the slow deterioration of middle-class English life in the wake of the First World War, at the age of twenty-one. In his autobiographical novel, \u003ci\u003eDown There on a Visit\u003c\/i\u003e, he describes the reception of the novel as a ‘flop’, perhaps accounting for its relative scarcity in the Isherwood canon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy is inscribed to ‘the Governor’, Isherwood’s affectionate nickname for Mangeot, ‘from his affectionate ex-secretary, the author - to remind him of happy days with the mud-coloured file’. Whilst in the violionist’s employ, Isherwood wrote \u003ci\u003eAll the Conspirators\u003c\/i\u003e at Mangeot’s home, Cresswell Place in Chelsea, later depicting it ‘with almost photographic accuracy in \u003ci\u003eThe Memorial\u003c\/i\u003e, where it became the London home of Mary Scriven, a character closely based on Olive Mangeot’, André’s wife. As Mangeot’s secretary, Isherwood handled correspondence, checked tickets on the door at the quartet’s concerts, and drove the players to and from events.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe ‘happy days with the mud-coloured file’ mentioned in the inscription are described in Isherwood’s \u003ci\u003eLions and Shadows\u003c\/i\u003e, in which Mangeot is given the pseudonym ‘Cheuret’: Isherwood describes mountains of  Cheuret’s unanswered correspondence spilling out like avalanches from cupboards or stuffed into suitcases under the bed. The ‘mud-coloured file’ was a concertina-style folder for filing these letters (and copies of answers thereto), which gave Isherwood ‘more trouble than any other inanimate object I have ever encountered, before or since. How often, on arrival, I would be greeted […] with the news: “The Mud-Coloured File’s lost again! Have you seen it? The Governor’s been hunting for hours!’ And then, at last, it would be discovered, lying innocently unnoticed on a chair, toning perfectly with dull grey shadows of a late autumn morning and, from the distance of a few yards, nearly invisible. Not only could the mud-coloured file uncannily disappear: its roomy pockets seemed to swallow letters like a conjurer’s vanishing-box. Cheuret’s conception of filing differed radically from my own: if he put a paper away under the letter P, then I was sure to hunt for it in M, N, O, Q, and R - and vice versa’ (p. 106).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePresentation copies of this early work are rare; even amongst the few known copies made out to colleagues, friends and associates, this is a particularly early example, dated May 1928.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Parker, Isherwood: A Life (2005).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2116819\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54993686364537,"sku":"2116819","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2116819.jpg?v=1782486191"},{"product_id":"jones-harold-illustrator-oscar-wilde-author-original-pen-and-ink-illustration-for-the-star-child-from-the-fa","title":"JONES, Harold (illustrator). [Oscar WILDE (author]. Original pen-and-ink illustration for \"The Star-Child\" from \"The Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde\".","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJONES, Harold (illustrator). [Oscar WILDE (author].\u003c\/strong\u003e Original pen-and-ink illustration for \"The Star-Child\" from \"The Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde\". 1976.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginal pen-and-ink illustration, image size circa 11 x 8cm; \u003cstrong\u003esigned\u003c\/strong\u003e, presented in an ivory-coloured acid-free mount; reproduced on page 157 of the published book; fresh.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2117014\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54886321652089,"sku":"2117014","price":170.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/products\/2117014.jpg?v=1702034872"},{"product_id":"whitman-walt-leaves-of-grass-including-sands-at-seventy-1st-annex-good-bye-my-fancy-2nd-annex-a-backward-glance-oer-traveld-roads-and-portrait-from-life","title":"WHITMAN, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Including Sands at Seventy … 1st Annex, Good-Bye my Fancy … 2nd Annex, A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads, and Portrait from Life.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWHITMAN, Walt.\u003c\/strong\u003e Leaves of Grass. Including Sands at Seventy … 1st Annex, Good-Bye my Fancy … 2nd Annex, A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads, and Portrait from Life. \u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia, David McKay,\u003c\/i\u003e 1891-2.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, binding C ; pp. 438, facsimile of the author's signature on title, stipple-engraved uncaptioned portrait facing p. 29, retaining tissue guard; spine bumped to head and foot, new front free endpaper, short closed tear to margin of title page not affecting text, otherwise very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNinth, 'deathbed edition', with Whitman's final amendments and additions\u003c\/strong\u003e. It is argued that this is not a separate edition at all but an issue, the 1881 edition being the final arrangement of the 293 poems that form \u003ci\u003eLeaves of Grass\u003c\/i\u003e, with the annexes added in this iteration being supplementary to the larger work. In any case, there are some minor textual differences in this edition and it represents Whitman's final conception of his life's work: \"As I now consider it finished as I propose \u0026amp; laid out—even its deficiencies are provided for, or plainly hinted at—to me its best points are an unmistakable atmosphere…\" (\u003ci\u003eCorrespondence\u003c\/i\u003e 5:271). It is certainly very different from the first edition, which contained only twelve poems.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite the controversy and outrage that greeted Whitman's work upon its first publication - one reviewer called it a \"mass of stupid filth\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Criterion\u003c\/i\u003e, 10 November 1855) - it has come to be considered a central work of American poetry, radical in form, epic in its treatment of democracy, nature and love, and courageous in its sexual frankness.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBAL 21441.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124225\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56908280332665,"sku":"2124225","price":900.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124225.jpg?v=1774525235"},{"product_id":"wilde-oscar-lord-alfred-douglas-translator-salome-a-tragedy-in-one-act","title":"WILDE, Oscar; [Lord Alfred DOUGLAS ( translator ); Aubrey BEARDSLEY ( illustrator )]. Salome. A tragedy in one act.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eThe First Illustrated \u003ci\u003eSalomé\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWILDE, Oscar; [Lord Alfred DOUGLAS (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e); Aubrey BEARDSLEY (\u003ci\u003eillustrator\u003ci\u003e)].\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Salome. A tragedy in one act. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Elkin Mathews \u0026amp; John Lane.\u003c\/i\u003e 1894.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall 4to. Original blue-green woven cloth, gilt designs after Beardsley blocked to boards, spine lettered in gilt, fore- and tail-edges uncut; pp. [10], 67, [1], 14 (advertisements), [2], 10 plates including frontispiece, illustrated title-page, contents page, and tailpiece by Aubrey Beardsley, printed on glazed paper from line blocks engraved by Carl Hentschel; a few chips to joints and corners, small loss to head of spine affecting 2 letters of gilt text, spine sunned; internally very clean; a very good copy; bookplate of William Forbes Morgan (1841–1916) to front pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst English edition of Wilde’s one-act tragedy, the first with Beardsley’s illustrations (four of which contain caricatures of Oscar Wilde), one of only 500 copies, translated by and dedicated to Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough Wilde tried to fix some of the errors, Douglas raged when he did, and wrote to the publishers that September, ‘as I cannot consent to have my work altered and edited, and thus to become a mere machine for doing the rough work of translation, I have decided to relinquish the affair altogether.’ (Daniel). Nevertheless, their relationship recovered, and the translation has since become the text most familiar to Anglophone audiences. Steven Berkoff used the Douglas translation for his critically acclaimed \u003ci\u003eSalomé\u003c\/i\u003e at the National Theatre in 1988, with all its archaisms and errors unabridged.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSadly, Wilde never saw the play produced. Its only performance during his lifetime was a one-off presentation at the Théatre de la Comédie-Parisienne on 11 February 1896, by which time he was already in prison. It was not performed publicly in Britain until 1931.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGertner Zatlin 865–81; Mason 350; Reade 274–83; Samuels Lasner 59; Vallance 86. See Daniel, ‘Lost In Translation: Oscar, Bosie and Salome’, Princeton University Library Chronicle (2007).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124696\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57122271494521,"sku":"2124696","price":4000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124696d.jpg?v=1776858538"},{"product_id":"auden-w-h-the-platonic-blow","title":"AUDEN, W. H. The Platonic Blow.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003ePirated Auden Erotica in America\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAUDEN, W. H.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Platonic Blow. \u003ci\u003eNew York: Fuck You Press.\u003c\/i\u003e 1965.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Original printed wrappers, stapled as issued; pp. [12]; slight toning to spine, small ink-stain to rear wrapper; else a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst separate edition, one of 300 trade copies, of Auden’s erotic poem detailing a spontaneous sexual encounter with a twenty-four-year-old mechanic, written in 1948 and issued in the same year as its pirated first appearance in print in Ed Sanders’s \u003ci\u003eFuck You \/ A Magazine of the Arts\u003c\/i\u003e in March.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSanders allegedly obtained a copy of the typescript from an employee of the Morgan Library, reproducing it in vol. 5, no. 8, of the magazine of the Fuck You Press without Auden’s permission (under the title ‘The Gobble Poem’), with cover illustrations by Andy Warhol. This edition was ‘designed \u0026amp; published, zapped and ejaculated by two legendary editors \u0026amp; poets’ at the Fuck You Press for the ‘Dietrich von Buttfükel World Gobble Grope Fellowship’. In addition to the present trade edition, the final page also advertises ‘a Rough Trade Edition of 5 numbered copies, each with beautiful slurp drawings’ by Joe Brainard; ‘an edition of 3 numbered copies, each with a sealed packet sewn in, containing secret gobble relics from the body of W. H. Auden’; and a ‘Turkey Edition’ of two copies, revealing ‘the names of the publishers, both evil young poets, Toe Queens, \u0026amp; cocksmen, scandalously freaking in the Lower East Side’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBloomfield \u0026amp; Mendelson, pp. 366–67.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124854\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400453038457,"sku":"2124854","price":250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124854.jpg?v=1780915241"},{"product_id":"auden-w-h-the-gobble-poem","title":"AUDEN, W. H. A Gobble Poem. Snatched from the Notebooks of W.H. Auden \u0026 Now Believed to be in the Morgan Library … First English Printing [ Wrapper :] The Gobble Poem.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003ePirated Auden Erotica in England\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAUDEN, W. H.\u003c\/strong\u003e A Gobble Poem. Snatched from the Notebooks of W.H. Auden \u0026amp; Now Believed to be in the Morgan Library … First English Printing [\u003ci\u003eWrapper\u003ci\u003e:] The Gobble Poem. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Fuck Books Unlimited\u003c\/i\u003e. 1967.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Stapled as issued in purple wrappers printed in green; ff. [1], 5, text to rectos only; title with profile illustration of a depicted from the neck down; spine slightly sunned, slight wear to extremities; a very good copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePirated second English printing (purportedly the first) of W. H. Auden’s erotic poem about a spontaneous sexual encounter with a twenty-four-year-old mechanic, first published in the \u003ci\u003eFuck You Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e in New York in 1965.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEd Sanders, the founder of  \u003ci\u003eFuck You Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, allegedly obtained a copy of the typescript from an employee of the Morgan Library, reproducing it in vol. 5, no. 8, of the magazine of the Fuck You Press without Auden’s permission (under the title ‘The Gobble Poem’), with cover illustrations by Andy Warhol, publishing it separately as ‘The Platonic Blow’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf this edition, ‘copies which were put together first have light violet […] card covers, but when this stock was exhausted vivid green […] card covers were used’ (Bloomfield \u0026amp; Mendelson).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBloomfield \u0026amp; Mendelson, pp. 367–68.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124853\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400454381945,"sku":"2124853","price":90.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124853.jpg?v=1780915257"},{"product_id":"ashbery-john-james-schuyler-a-nest-of-ninnies","title":"ASHBERY, John; James SCHUYLER. A Nest of Ninnies.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eLee Harwood’s Copy\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eASHBERY, John; James SCHUYLER.\u003c\/strong\u003e A Nest of Ninnies. \u003ci\u003eNew York: E. P. Dutton and Co.\u003c\/i\u003e 1969.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original quarter turquoise cloth over lavender boards, spine lettered in metallic lavender, in the dust-jacket designed by James McMullan, priced $4.95 to front flap; pp. 191, [1]; some spotting to top-edge and three or four small spots to fore-edge of textblock, jacket a touch rubbed to spine tips and corners, 5-mm closed tear to upper corner of rear flap; a bright, near-fine copy in like wrapper; presentation inscription in blue ink to front free end-paper from John Ashbery to Lee Harwood, dated 5 May 1970 (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first printing, collaboratively written by Ashbery and Schuyler over the course of nearly two decades, this copy with an uncharacteristically extended presentation inscription from Ashbery to his friend and sometime lover, the English poet Lee Harwood (1939–2015).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to Ashbery, \u003ci\u003eA Nest of Ninnies\u003c\/i\u003e was conceived as an amusement during car journeys from the Hamptons to New York City. ‘[Schuyler] pulled out a pad and said, “Think of a first line.” So I did, and he thought of the second line. We proceeded along that way, gathering inspiration from the suburban countryside we were going through [...] But we never had any intention of finishing it, much less publishing it [...] There was a period of seven or eight years in which we didn’t do anything on it at all, because I never saw Jimmy while I was living in Europe’. Although the writers initially began by contributing alternate lines, they gradually began to contribute longer passages, ‘but it did seem to require us being together; we once tried to do it by correspondence, but it just didn’t work at all’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe resulting novel – named for Robert Armin’s 1608 jest book and published in an edition of six thousand copies – is both very funny and very literary, an American novel of manners owing its particular brand of high camp to England, and to Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton Burnett in particular. Although it received little critical attention at the time, \u003cstrong\u003ethe novel’s most generous review came from W. H. Auden\u003c\/strong\u003e in \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e (4 May 1969): ‘Like many folk tales, the idylls of Theocritus, the \u003ci\u003eAlice\u003c\/i\u003e books, \u003ci\u003eThe Im-portance of Being Ernest\u003c\/i\u003e, the novels of Firbank and P. G. Wodehouse, \u003ci\u003eA Nest of Ninnies\u003c\/i\u003e is a pastoral: the world it depicts is an imaginary Garden of Eden, a place of innocence from which all serious needs and desires have been excluded.’ The jacket features a blurbs from Ned Rorem and, more unexpectedly, Anthony Burgess (‘Very neat and funny and – for a foreigner like myself – most informative of American life today’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: Inscribed by John Ashbery to the English poet Lee Harwood: ‘For Lee | with love | John | New York | May 5, 1970’, followed by two quotations from the novel in Ashbery’s hand: ‘“Or you can have the \u003ci\u003ezuppa inglese\u003c\/i\u003e – the English trifle soup”. – p.138’ and ‘“To think that the \u003ci\u003eGradus ad Parnassum\u003c\/i\u003e should end—here”. – p. 180’. The \u003ci\u003ezuppa inglese\u003c\/i\u003e is perhaps a playful nod to Harwood’s origins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAshbery lived in Paris for most of the 1960s, but met Harwood in London, at a reading of Ashbery’s at the US Embassy. Harwood got to know him at a party afterwards, and recalls that ‘after that I went over to stay with him several times in Paris. Then he had to move back to the States. In the mid-to late 60s I was spending a lot of time going back and forth to New York, and I usually stayed with him. A lovely warm friendship built up between us.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe two were, for a while, lovers; Harwood’s \u003ci\u003eThe Man with Blue Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e (1966) is a poetic chronicle of sorts of the affair the two poets conducted between 1965 and 1966. Alt-hough Harwood was the ‘junior’ figure, he was among a handful of contemporary English poets important to Ashbery (others including F. T. Prince and Mark Ford), and poetic influence moved in both directions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eKermani A14. See Ford, ‘No one else can take a bath for you’, LRB (March 1988).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124830\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400455725433,"sku":"2124830","price":850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124830.jpg?v=1780915319"},{"product_id":"vidal-gore-myra-breckinridge","title":"VIDAL, Gore. Myra Breckinridge.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eA Transgender Actress in Hollywood\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVIDAL, Gore.\u003c\/strong\u003e Myra Breckinridge. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Anthony Blond\u003c\/i\u003e. 1968.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the dust-jacket priced 35s. net to the front flap, lettered in white and yellow; pp. 205, [3]; very slight spotting to upper and fore-edges, jacket rubbed and nicked to spine tips and edges; a near-fine copy in a very good jacket; title-page signed by the author in black.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn uncommon signed first UK edition, first printing of Vidal’s landmark novel, is-sued with authorised excisions from the American text and carrying the author’s sardonic note regarding his adaptation to the ‘high moral climate that envelops the British Isles’.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the most provocative and widely discussed novels of the 1960s, and the author’s own favourite among his works, \u003ci\u003eMyra Breckinridge\u003c\/i\u003e is a flamboyant assault on the sexual and social orthodoxies of post-war America. Presented in the form of the diary of its transgender heroine – formerly Myron Breckinridge – the novel follows Myra’s arrival in Hollywood, where her project of social and sexual transformation unfolds amid the glamour, artifice, and kitsch of the film industry. Comic, irreverent, and subversive, the novel antici-pated debates about gender and identity that would only later enter the cultural mainstream. Although the work was published uncut by Little, Brown in the United States, Vidal’s London publisher, Heinemann, declined to issue it, ‘fearing that an association with the book would affect Heinemann’s reputation in a way that would damage sales’ (Kaplan).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnthony Blond, ‘a smaller but less timid publisher’ (\u003ci\u003eibid\u003c\/i\u003e.), subsequently acquired the book, on condition that Vidal ‘would respond satisfactorily to pages of objections raised by its own lawyers, some of which had to do with obscenity, some with libel’. Vidal made the requisite alterations and cuts, adding a characteristically tart note to the British edition: ‘Wanting in every way to adapt to the high moral climate that envelops the British Isles, the author has allowed certain excisions to be made in the American text.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe novel is dedicated to Christopher Isherwood, who had dedicated \u003ci\u003eA Single Man\u003c\/i\u003e to Vidal four years earlier.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eJoshi 25.b.; Stanton, p.11. See Kaplan, Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2123717\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400464736633,"sku":"2123717","price":300.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2123717.jpg?v=1780915445"},{"product_id":"vivien-renee-le-vent-des-vaisseaux","title":"VIVIEN, Renée. Le Vent des vaisseaux.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e'Sapho 1900' at Sea\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVIVIEN, Renée.\u003c\/strong\u003e Le Vent des vaisseaux. \u003ci\u003eParis: E. Sansot \u0026amp; Cie\u003c\/i\u003e. 1910.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s illustrated wrappers; pp. 103, [1]; upper hinge cracked (textblock partly coming away from spine), short split to upper joint, small chip to head of spine; otherwise a very good copy, uncut and unopened.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of this collection of twenty-four Symbolist poems by the London-born lesbian poet Renée Vivien, published the year after her death at the age of thirty-two.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVivien (born Pauline Mary Tarn, 1877–1909) studied Greek for the express purpose of reading fragments of Sappho’s poetry in the original, and in 1903 published \u003ci\u003eSapho\u003c\/i\u003e, the first explicitly queer translation of Sappho, earning herself the nickname ‘Sapho 1900’. She and her on-and-off lover, the American heiress Natalie Barney (who, similarly inspired by Sappho, began writing love poetry to women as early as 1900) spent time in Lesbos in 1904, where they discussed the prospect of a Sapphic school of poetry for women; by 1908, Vivien’s health had declined: she drank heavily and ate almost nothing. She died in 1909, a year after her attempted suicide attempt by means of overdosing on laudanum.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the second of her three posthumous collections of verse, along with \u003ci\u003eHaillons\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDans un coin de violettes\u003c\/i\u003e, also published in 1910. Here, she writes about the beauty of nature, the search for identity, solitude, and love between women, incorporating elements of ethereal landscapes and of Greek myth. In ‘Aveu dans le silence’, for example, she describes the ‘jalousie extreme’ which prevents her from expressing her love for a woman for whom Vivien ‘lives only for the light in her hair’, the soft ‘rays of her smile’, and her ‘miraculous’ green-grey eyes (pp. 70–71, \u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e). There was also a \u003ci\u003ede luxe\u003c\/i\u003e large-paper edition of fifty numbered copies on Japon Impérial, in a variant binding.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWe find ten copies in the US (Cornell, Harvard, Indiana, NYPL, Princeton, UC Davis, UCLA, Umass Boston, Wisconsin, Yale) and none in the UK; this edition not on Library Hub.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125439\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63830894117241,"sku":"2125439","price":350.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125439.jpg?v=1782396274"},{"product_id":"lorrain-jean-pseud-i-e-paul-duval-contes-pour-lire-a-la-chandelle","title":"‘LORRAIN, Jean’, pseud . [ i.e. Paul DUVAL]. Contes pour lire à la Chandelle.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003ePresented by Proust's Duellist\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e‘LORRAIN, Jean’, \u003ci\u003epseud\u003ci\u003e. [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003ci\u003e Paul DUVAL].\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Contes pour lire à la Chandelle. Paris: [C. Renaudie for] Mercure de France. [30 April] 1897.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e12mo. Publisher's drab printed wrappers, Mercure de France device to upper wrapper and spine, uncut and partly unopened; pp. [175], [4], [1 (blank)]; slight creasing to spine, small chip to upper joint, spine ends lightly bumped; uniform light toning, slight dampstaining to upper corner; a very good copy; presentation inscription to front free endpaper 'à René Maizeroy, son ami Jean Lorrain' (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUncommon first edition of these short stories 'to be read by candlelight' by the openly gay Symbolist poet and novelist Jean Lorrain, notorious for duelling Proust (after Lorrain had subtly outed him in print) only two months before the publication of the present work.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLorrain (born Paul Duval, 1855–1906) came to Paris in 1881, where he became colloquially known as ‘Sodom’s ambassador to Paris’. A friend of Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, and Samuel Pozzi, he was known for his long-standing addiction to ether (it is said that his grave reeked of it decades after his death), his pugnacity, and his ‘great fondness for hoodlums, fairground wrestlers, butcher-boys and assorted pimps’, as he wrote to a friend in an 1890 letter (\u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e Sibalis, GLBTQ Archive, \u003ci\u003eonline\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLorrain narrowly avoided a duel with his childhood friend Maupassant, offended at recognising himself in one of Lorrain’s fictional characters, in 1886, and two years later closely escaped coming to blows with Verlaine after Lorrain had mistakenly reported that he had been committed to an asylum. Perhaps his most notorious conflict is his duel with Proust, who challenged Lorrain after reading a review of his first book, \u003ci\u003eLes Plaisirs et le jours\u003c\/i\u003e, in which Lorrain hinted at the sexual nature of Proust’s relationship with Lucien Daudet (son of the novelist Alphonse Daudet). Lorrain, with the bibliophile Octave Uzanne as his second, intentionally missed his shot, as did Proust.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: \u003cstrong\u003eThis copy of \u003ci\u003eContes pour lire à la Chandelle\u003c\/i\u003e was presented by Lorrain to another former duelling partner, the journalist René Maizeroy (the pseudonym of Baron René-Jean Toussaint), who challenged Lorrain on 18 April 1887 following a press controversy\u003c\/strong\u003e. ‘On the first and second attempts, Maizeroy was struck twice in the arm with a sword, and witnesses broke up the fight’ (\u003ci\u003eLe Matin\u003c\/i\u003e, 19 April 1887, \u003ci\u003etrans.\u003c\/i\u003e); the two remained fast friends following the altercation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOCLC and Library Hub find six copies outside continental Europe, of which four in the US (Illinois, Oberlin, UNC Chapel Hill, Stony Brook), one in the UK (Glasgow), and one in Australia (ANU).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNot in Vicaire (see vol. V, col. 399).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2121536\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63840579027321,"sku":"2121536","price":750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2121536.jpg?v=1782483847"},{"product_id":"hafez-justin-huntly-mccarthy-translator-ghazels-from-the-divan-of-hafiz","title":"HAFEZ; Justin Huntly McCARTHY ( translator ). Ghazels from the Divan of Hafiz.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eBeardsley’s Bookplate for Aleister Crowley’s Lover\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHAFEZ; Justin Huntly McCARTHY (\u003ci\u003etranslator\u003ci\u003e).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Ghazels from the Divan of Hafiz. \u003ci\u003eLondon\u003c\/i\u003e: [\u003ci\u003eChiswick Press for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eDavid Nutt\u003c\/i\u003e. 1893.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s green boards, title lettered to upper board in Persian in teal, spine lettered in English in teal, yapp fore-edges; pp. vii, [1 (blank)], 151, [1]; spine ends bumped, spine lightly soiled; offsetting to free endpapers, but internally clean and bright; a very good copy; contemporary inscription ‘Aux cœurs blessés, l’ombre et le silence’ (Balzac) to front pastedown and free endpaper, bookplate of Herbert Charles Pollitt, designed by Aubrey Beardsley and lettered ‘Mr Pollitt’s Bookplate’, to front pastedown (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of this prose translation of Hafez’s fourteenth-century Persian poems by the Irish politician Justin Huntly McCarthy (1859–1936), this copy with Beardsley’s rare bookplate    made for his patron, Herbert Charles Pollitt (1871–1942), at one point the owner of most of Beardsley’s \u003ci\u003eLysistrata\u003c\/i\u003e drawings; it is one of only three bookplates Beardsley designed and was initially intended for the artist’s own use.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘Beardsley had been promising Pollitt a bookplate for some time. When this drawing was published in \u003ci\u003eA Book of Fifty Drawings\u003c\/i\u003e in 1897 conscience may have got the better of the artist and in Pollitt’s copy of the \u003ci\u003eedition de luxe\u003c\/i\u003e Beardsley added the lettering in india ink on the reproduction. From this Pollitt had a new block made (by Carl Hentschel) for his own use) (Warrack and Perkins 82, quoted in Samuels Lasner). On 26 September 1897, Beardsley wrote to Pollitt from Paris announcing the completion of the bookplate: ‘And how is my dear best Friend? There is one more wonderful book plate in the world. That makes two. Yours and another I have just made for a Miss Custance. You must ask Leonardo [\u003ci\u003ei.e.\u003c\/i\u003e Leonard Smithers] for a proof’ (Beardsley, \u003ci\u003eLetters\u003c\/i\u003e, p. 372).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeardsley’s other two bookplates were for the scholar and physician John Lumsden Propert, and for the poet Olive Custance, who in 1902 married Lord Alfred Douglas. Herbert Charles Pollitt, later known as Jerome Pollitt, was known for his cross-dressing performances as Diane de Rougy and for his friendships with Beardsley and Smithers; at Cambridge he had been president of Footlights. From late 1897 through 1898 he was romantically involved with Aleister Crowley, who ‘lived with Pollitt as his wife for some six months and he made a poet out of me’ (Crowley, quoted in Kaczynski). During this time, Pollitt introduced Crowley to Smithers. ‘It is probably through Pollitt that Crowley met the ailing Beardsley and commissioned a bookplate from him; he also asked Beardsley to provide a cover illustration for one of his books […] Alas, Beardsley died in January 1898, before he could finish either commission’ (ibid, p. 38). Pollitt is thought to have kept three copies of each of his books, the first two with Beardsley bookplates: a reading copy, one to be kept in his library in pristine condition, and one to be inscribed and given away.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis copy is very likely connected to his relationship to Crowley, who in 1910 privately printed the collection of homoerotic verse \u003ci\u003eBagh-i-Muattar: The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz\u003c\/i\u003e, in which ‘the relations between God and the soul are set forth’ under ‘the figure of the amorous adventures of a Sufi Poet and his cupbearer’, the style much inspired by the work of Hafez. \u003c\/strong\u003eWithin this collection, the opening of the poem ‘The Comparisons’ directly parodies a ghazal by Hafiz. \u003cstrong\u003eFamously, the first letter of each line of ‘The Riddle’ (‘Habib hath heard; let all Iran who spell aright from A to Z | Exalt thy fame and understand with whom I made a marriage-bed [...]’) spells out ‘Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt’, and the first letter of the following poem, ‘Bagh-i-Muattar’, spells out Aleister Crowley’s name in reverse.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeardsley’s bookplate was finished only a month before Crowley and Pollitt met in 1897, and three months before the two became lovers on New Year’s Eve. The manuscript quotation to the front pastedown and free endpaper, is from Balzac: ‘Aux cœurs blessés l’ombre et le silence’ (‘For wounded hearts, shadow and silence’). Crowley, in his autobiography, mourned the end of his relationship with Pollitt as a ‘lifetime regret’, and Pollitt perhaps felt the same.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJustin Huntly McCarthy was MP for Athlone and Newry from 1884 to 1892, as well as the author of biographies on Gladstone, Peel, and Pope Leo XIII. He is noted for his important prose translation of four hundred and sixty-six quatrains of the \u003ci\u003eRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam\u003c\/i\u003e, published by David Nutt in 1889 (reprinted 1898). His translation of Hafez is dedicated to the poet William Ernest Henley (best known for his poem ‘Invictus’) as a ‘tribute of gratitude for many things, especially a tribute of gratitude for the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments”’, Henley’s 1893 poem on the transportive magic of reading. ‘One whose memories of the Orient glow with such heat and colour may, for the sake of those memories, be willing to welcome these pages from that Book of Verses which the poet of Shiraz wrote in the gardens of Mosella by the gardens of Rocknabad’ (p. v).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor the bookplate, see Reade 471; Samuels Lasner 113; Samuels Lasner, Bookplates A2; Gallatin 1065 (but not in Gallatin, Aubrey Beardsley as a Designer of Book-Plates. On Pollitt, see Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2012).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125990\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64326431146361,"sku":"2125990","price":1850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125990.jpg?v=1787324781"}],"url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/collections\/lgbtq-queer.oembed","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}