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44 [COLERIDGE, Sara.] Phantasmion. London: William Pickering, 1837 Small octavo (166 × 104 mm). Contemporary green half roan, spine lettered in gilt (“Phantasmion / S. Coleridge”), marbled sides and endpapers, top edge gilt. Author’s name inscribed on title in an early hand. Discreetly re- furbished, one or two light marginal marks to contents, a very good copy. first edition, one of 250 copies published, of the long fairy-tale, Phantasmion , “one of the earliest novel-length fantasies separate from the Gothic tradition” (Sanders). It has been described not only as an important precursor to The Lord of the Rings , but also by science-fiction aficionados as an early and influential example of that genre. The work is a prose epic set in a fantastical Lake Dis- trict, where Sara Coleridge had grown up in the household of her uncle Robert Southey, and modelled on Spenser’s Faerie Queene . It is a strong candidate for the first modern fantasy novel, preceding George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858) by two decades. See Hunt, Peter, & Dennis Butts, Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History , Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1995, p. 92; Sanders, Elizabeth M., Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith , Macfarland & Co., 2017, p. 57; Sutherland, John, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction , Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 183. £2,000 [130590] 45 CUNARD, Nancy (ed.) HURSTON, Zora Neale, & others. Negro Anthology. 1931–1933. London: Nancy Cunard at Wishart & Co, 1934 Quarto. Original brown cloth, titles to spine and front board in red, top edge brown. Illustrations throughout. Cloth inner hinges sometime renewed, ti- tle page mounted on stub, last 10 or so pages restored to fore edge, preced- ing 20 pages nibbled to fore edge, minor foxing to endpapers. first edition, in the first issue binding of rough brown cloth, of “the first comprehensive study of the achievement and plight of blacks around the world” (Gordon, p. xii), appealingly prove- nanced, with the ownership signature of the influential reviewer Hugh Gordon Porteus (1906–1993), dated in the year of publica- tion. The 150 contributors to Cunard’s poetic-political work includ- ed Louis Armstrong, Samuel Beckett, Norman Douglas, Theodore
Dreiser, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. This copy includes the censored essay by Rene Crevel on unnumbered pages at pp. 581– 583: “It is clear from her FBI file that spies in London reported to the United States on the preparation and publication of the Negro Anthology . The censors intervened and insisted that Rene Crev- el’s ‘The negress in the Brothel,’ translated by Samuel Beckett, be removed from Negro . Undaunted, Cunard had the three pages set secretly by the radical Utopia Press and tipped them in while binding the volumes herself. The essay is not listed in the table of contents but is actually in the printed book—a reminder of her rad- ical resourcefulness” (Marcus, p. 139). Crevel’s essay was omitted in Ford’s 1970 reprinting of the work. “ Negro is a staggering accomplishment—in purpose, breadth of information, and size. Almost 8 pounds, 855 pages (12 inches by 10 inches), with 200 entries by 150 contributors (the majority, black) and nearly 400 illustrations, it was, and in many ways remains, unique—an encyclopaedic introduction to the history, social and political conditions, and cultural achievements of the black pop- ulation throughout the world . . . It is one of the earliest examples of African American, cross-cultural, and transnational studies and a call to all civilised people to condemn racial discrimination and appreciate the great social and cultural achievements of a long-suf- fering people” (Gordon, p. 181). Cunard had the book printed at her own expense, and controlled every detail of the publication: “ Negro would have to be printed exactly as she wished, bound in se- pia-brown cloth with paper of a specific texture and colour (which had to be custom made), and its title, in red letters, would scroll diagonally from top left to bottom right. She would control every phase of its gestation and correct all final proofs” (ibid., p. 163). Rare: 1,000 copies of the work were printed, but a large number of unsold copies were destroyed in a warehouse fire during the Blitz. Gordon, Lois, Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist , Columbia University Press, 2007; Henderson, Mae (ed.), Borders, Boundaries, and Frames: Essays in Cultural Criticism and Cultural Studies , Routledge, 1995; Marcus, Jane, Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write Race , Rutgers University Press, 2004. £3,750 [121878]
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