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19 BURDEKIN, Katherine, as Murray Constantine. The Devil, Poor Devil! [Together with a rough proof.] London: Boriswood, 1934 The dedication copy First edition, first impression, dedication copy, a wonderful association, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to her friend and literary agent Margaret Goldsmith, “To Margaret, from Kay, November 3rd 1934”, additionally signed as Murray Constantine on the title page, and with Goldsmith’s name written out in Burdekin’s hand beneath the dedication “To M.G.”. This copy is presented together with a rough proof of the work. It was Margaret who, upon Burdekin falling into a bout of depression in 1938, gave her research material on Marie Antoinette to lift her out of her creative slump. This material invigorated Burdekin, and resulted in a historical novel, Venus in Scorpio , credited to them both and published in 1940. Burdekin’s pseudonym, adopted from 1934, was first revealed in the 1980s by feminist scholar Daphne Patai and her writing has since garnered serious academic interest. The Devil, Poor Devil! is a satirical fantasy about how the Devil’s power is undermined by modern rationalism. Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in red. With dust jacket. Proof: octavo. Original brown paper wrappers, titles to front wrapper in black. Board edges a little bumped and toned, rubbing to spine lettering, light offsetting to endpapers; a very good copy in the toned jacket, not price- clipped, spine browned, nicks to edges, a couple of small chips to head of spine. Proof: spine cocked and toned, a couple of light pencil marks to front wrapper, damp mark to foot of gutters to second half of book block. £3,000 [151274]
20 BURROUGHS, William S. The Ticket That Exploded.
Paris: The Olympia Press, 1962 Inscribed to a “far out cat”
First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, “For David Snell, William Burroughs”. Snell (1921–1987) was one of two reporters for Life magazine, the other Loomis Dean (1917–2005), who were present when Burroughs and Brion Gysin invented the cut-up technique on 1 October 1959, and whose subsequent interview outed Burroughs as a heroin user to Life readers, among them Burroughs’s own mother. Snell’s opening line upon meeting his interviewee was “Have an Old Gold, Mr Burroughs”, a direct reference to Naked Lunch , in which two cops, O’Brien and Hauser, let themselves into Bill’s flat; Snell’s reference draws an excellent and knowing parallel between the two Life reporters and the cops, positioning himself as O’Brien: “they weren’t bad as laws go. At least O’Brien wasn’t. O’Brien was the con man, and Hauser the tough guy. A vaudeville team. Hauser had a way of hitting you before he said anything just to break the ice. Then O’Brien gives you an Old Gold – just like a cop to smoke Old Golds somehow . . . and starts putting down a cop con that was really bottled in bond. Not a bad guy” (Burroughs, p. 190). Burroughs valued Snell’s reference, writing to Allen Ginsberg that Snell and Dean were “2 far out cats with real appreciation for my work that can’t be faked” (quoted in Roach, p. 164). Burroughs had no love for Life magazine, but he liked Snell and Dean, and exonerated them for their parts in the final piece, a vitriolic repudiation of the Beats penned by a staff writer. The Life article, a long list of character assassinations that targets Kerouac,
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