[ALAIN CHEVALLIER] - CAP -Livre Rare Book
A Farmer's Life. With woodcuts by Stephen Bone
19223433London: Jonathan Cape 1922. Paperback. Very Good. FIRST LIMITED EDITION 296/ 750 INSCRIBED BY CLEMENCE HOUSMAN. 8vo incl. six woodcut plates by Stephen Bone. Original green cloth white paper title label lettered in black with green decorations to spine. Leading and bottom edges untrimmed. Pushing to spine ends. Edges toned top edge spotted. Inscribed in black ink to ffep: "To Norah from C. H. Christmas 1923" later ex libris of Alex. Bridge to front endpaper with his name and date 24.2. 1958 below in blue ink faint bands of offsetting to feps. Occasional fox spots spine cracked at pp. 32-3 with binding firm else clean and bright esp. Bone's six fine woodcut plates. In the original buff dust jacket lettered in black and reproducing Bone's woodcut 'Road' to front panel: price-clipped toned and foxed creased and nicked spine ends chipped; Bridge's pencil notes to ffep re. the inscription. Very good/ very good A tantalising as yet! unsupported association copy of the attractive limited edition George Bourne's familial farming memoir illustrated with six sympathetic woodcuts by Stephen Bone with an inscription ascribed to fellow woodcut artist author and suffragette Clemence Housman supposedly gifting it to the prolific and prolifically censored Irish novelist Norah Hoult: "To Norah from C. H. Christmas 1923"; according to a PO note "Alan Hancox the Cheltenham-based antiquarian bookseller who sold this to me says the inscription on the endpaper is by Clemence Housman. to Norah Hoult". Credibly in Housman's hand in 1923 the year of inscription the retiring artist and author would have been 62 and living briefly in Hampshire with her brother Laurence en route to their final home in Street from London; while her own novels and work for the Suffrage Atelier was behind her Housman was still producing wood engraving of her brother's drawings to illustrate his books with 1922 seeing Jonathan Cape issue three volumes of fairy stories and Christian fantasies on which the siblings collaborated. The significantly younger Hoult 1898–1984 had recently moved to London and was writing for a range of publications including Time and Tide the Telegraph and Pearson's Magazine; her first book Poor Women wouldn't appear for another five years. It's possible that Housman and Hoult may have met through literary circles and it seems likely that they would have been sympathetic to each other. Hoult would go on to nurture a close cross-generational friendship with her neighbour in wartime Kensington the novelist and suffragist Violet Hunt on whom she based her protagonist Claire in her 1944 novel of memory loss There Were No Windows. Alex. Bridge was a Tragara Press collector and correspondent of its founder Alan Anderson. With thanks to Elizabeth Crawford. Jonathan Cape paperback
Quair Books · Royaume-Uni375,00 £GB≈ 428,17 €
