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internally clean, with the colours still bright and vibrant. A very attractive and unusual item. £1,500 [157277] 104 SASSOON, Siegfried. Caricature of T. S. Eliot. [No place, after 1927] “Pastor Eliot of the Modernist Tabernacle wishes you you a prim Xmas and a priggish New Year” This Christmas card was one of Siegfried Sassoon’s private spoofs of his literary friends and contemporaries, and a particularly amusing example. One side has a caricature of Eliot in clerical robes (with “T.S.E.” embroidered into the stole), the other has Sassoon’s satirical Christmas greeting, “Wishing you a prim Xmas and a priggish New Year. From Pastor T. Stears Eliot. Modernist Tabernacle. Boston. Mass.” To crown the joke, Sassoon has added a clipped signature from Eliot himself and pasted it down beneath the greeting. Famously having little time for the modernists, in the years following the First World War, Sassoon found himself caught between his beloved Georgian poets and the rise of Eliot, Pound, and the Sitwells. Reflecting on this later, he wrote: “I now live almost entirely detached from the literary scene and the younger generation and am liable to assume that none of them regard me as having any significance in the Eliot/Auden age”. Though undated, the caricature likely post-dates Eliot’s high- profile Anglican conversion in 1927. Card folder (181 × 322 mm unfolded), pencil and watercolour illustration to one side, manuscript in blue and red ink to the other. Very good condition. £3,750 [157447]
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Teachers’ Diploma at the University of Oxford. Inserted in the leather folder is a partial letter by Friend, dated 2 September 1975. In the letter, addressed to his friend Heather, the artist presents this manuscript to her as a gift: “As you said, you liked it so much (for which I thank you warmly!), I am enclosing this little book as a present for you. It has not seen the light for quite 50 years”. Friend then refers to Carman’s translation of Sappho as “one of my constant readable treasures”, and explains that the style of illumination he chose for his book was adapted from the Celtic manuscript tradition, “the sort of thing in the famous book of Kells”. Carman’s translation of Sappho, first published in 1903 in a volume titled Sappho, One Hundred Lyrics , was the first comprehensive and fully imagined rendering into English of the thitherto fragmentary poems. Often considered Carman’s “finest volume of poetry” ( Dictionary of Canadian Biography ), One Hundred Lyrics is particularly notable for having made Sappho accessible and exciting to a non-academic English-speaking audience. The work was read and admired in particular by modernist poets such as Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound. Indeed, critic D. M. R. Bentley has suggested that, “the brief, crisp lyrics of the Sappho volume almost certainly contributed to the aesthetic and practice of Imagism”. Octavo, manuscript on paper, 10 leaves (192 × 143 mm). Original paper wrappers, string bound with orange wool, title and small drawing of a lyre inked to front cover in red. Housed in a red morocco grain roan folder, gilt coat of arms to front board, interior lined in white silk. Elaborate title page within border, calligraphic text in black ink, intricately designed floriated initials (one inhabited) and ornaments throughout, realised with multiple colours, some detailed in gold. Very light soiling to wrappers, otherwise
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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