the foot of leaf F7 and the catchword cunningly concealed. The supplied leaf [F8] carries the verse entitled “In laudem Sagittatiorum”. The British Library holds several books on archery with notes in her hand; it also holds two copies of Archerie Reviv’d , so the present volume may have escaped from Dorothea’s bequest as being a duplicate. Archerie Reviv’d is certainly not a common book: ESTC locates copies in seven British and seven North American institutions, and auction records show a mere seven copies being presented since 1920 (in 1950 Maggs offered Charles II’s copy in contemporary morocco). The present binding matches that of the Folger Library copy, their catalogue identifying it as the work of the “Tulip Spine Binder”, active in England in the 1670s when the tulip was a popular form of decoration. Regrettably, at some point the spine of our copy was lost before the original binder could be identified. Octavo (177 × 111 mm). Contemporary English black morocco neatly rebacked to style, sides with gilt double panel incorporating tulip and sunflower tools, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, remnants of green fabric ties. Initial blank present, terminal leaf supplied (see note) and somewhat shorter with paper flaw grazing one letter. Light wear at tips else binding in bright condition, some surface loss and patching to endpapers (where perhaps once pasted together), contents lightly browned, scattered foxing. A very good copy. ¶ESTC R5622; Grolier, Wither to Prior , 801; Wing S3647. R. K. Eaglen, “Sarah Sophia Banks and her English Hammered Coins”, The British Numismatic Journal , Volume 78, 2008; Antonia Fraser, King Charles II , 1993; H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books , 2001; Lawrence V. Ryan, “Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus in Heroic Verse”, The Huntington Library Quarterly , Vol. 22, February 1959, p. 119. £3,000 [150462] 8 BARNES, Djuna. Ryder. New York: Horace Liverlight, 1928 a time-capsule of barnes’s most destructive and passionate relationship First edition, first printing, the dedication copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to the love of her life, Thelma Wood: “Maybe my Bobolenck Simon would like this – Djuna, August 1928 Paris”. Wood has preserved, inserted in this copy, keepsakes of their stormy relationship, including a leaf of a powerful unpublished love letter from Barnes dated March 1922, the year after they met. “Simon” was a well-known nickname for Wood; “Bobolenck” is more obscure. Barnes may mean “Bobolink”, a small type of blackbird. The bird is the subject of a poem published by their mutual friend Edna St Vincent Millay the same year: “Only the bobolink on the rainy rhubarb blossom knows my heart . . . Bobolink, you and I, an airy fool and an earthy chuckling under rain!”. If Barnes intended it as a term of endearment, it is in inauspicious one, as Millay was another of Wood’s lovers. Barnes ended their relationship just months after inscribing this book. Besides her inscription, she has hand- coloured her illustrations in her distinctive bright pink ink and annotated the work in five places. The couple were both American expatriates living in Paris. Wood was well- regarded as a silverpoint artist, and Barnes was a journalist and budding author. Their cohabitation was characterized by
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heavy drinking, partying, arguing, and infidelity. The fragment of a love letter Woods kept with this book dates from one of Barnes’s earliest visits back to America. It is a distraught and melodramatic passage that illustrates the jealousy and passion that defined their relationship: “I can’t tell you anything now – excepting that it has all been for nothing – I think of you Thelma & it is my only happiness. For God’s sake remain aloof & love no one too much . . . I love you & I suffer”. For Barnes and Wood, 1928 was “one of the dark years” (Field, p. 119). Barnes wanted a monogamous relationship (despite her own infidelities), and Thelma’s spiralling alcoholism and refusal to stop seeing other people strained their love past breaking point. In the same month as this inscription, Barnes wrote to Robert McAlmon claiming her life was a hell, and to Emily Coleman she suggested that Thelma wanted to kill her. Barnes ended the relationship over Wood’s infatuation with Henriette McCrea Metcalf, whom she skewered as Jenny Petherbridge in her masterpiece Nightwood (1936), a work that Wood claimed ruined her life. As well as the love-letter, the other items kept by Wood offer a tender time-capsule: a newspaper clipping of Barnes’s most famous headshot; a full-length photograph of her on a beach; two copies of a striking personally printed postcard
showing Wood alongside the lover who introduced her to Barnes, Berenice Abbott, and two individuals who remain unknown; Wood’s signed business card; a photograph of a rosebush; a photo-developer envelope dated 14 March 1946; a shop slip with Wood’s name and “£100” written in manuscript; an invitation to an exhibition of Wood’s artwork at Quatre Chemins in Paris (with the pencilled addresses of Ernest Brown of Leicester Galleries and Lady Una Troubridge on verso); and an advertisement card for a shop and bar in Monterrey, Mexico. Ryder is Barnes’s first attempt at a family history, describing her early life on the Huntington farm, comic anecdotes about their unusual living arrangements, and tales from the London literary scene, of which her grandmother Zadel was a fixture. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered in red, top edge red, others uncut. Frontispiece and 8 illustrations by the author, 7 of which are hand-coloured by her. This copy has a duplicate of the plate at p. 302 loosely inserted, also hand-coloured. Spine faded, minor rubbing to board edges, touch of wear to tips, a very good copy. ¶ Carley Moore, “Taking Responsibility: An Interview with Sarah Schulman”, Los Angeles Review of Books , 14 October 2018; Andrew Field, Djuna, the Life and Times of Djuna Barnes, 1983. £15,000 [161973]
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7 BANKS, Sarah Sophia – SHOTTEREL, Robert, & Thomas D’Urfey. Archerie Reviv’d; or, The Bow-Man’s Excellence. London: Printed by Thomas Roycroft, 1676 “In laudem Sagittatiorum”: from the library of an expert archer and great collector First edition of this decidedly uncommon work, an entertaining poetical treatment in heroic couplets of Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus (1545), presented here in contemporary morocco by the “Tulip Spine Binder” and with a distinguished provenance, being from the library of Sarah Sophia Banks (1744–1818), an exceptional and assiduous collector of antiquarian items and herself a keen archer. Sarah Sophia, the sister of Sir Joseph Banks, “created a collection like no other, documenting the time she lived in. Going to the theatre, to see friends or shopping, Banks saw the value in even the smallest witness to these transactions and interactions, a record of daily life in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her collection was initially bequeathed to her sister-in-law, Dorothea, who immediately donated it to the British Museum” (British Museum online). This copy of Archerie Reviv’d has her discreet and carefully penned ownership inscription at the head of leaf B1, “S: S: Banks 1792”, and a note in her hand on a slip tipped to the initial blank which reveals her astute eye and the care and attention that she displays in her approach to the “antique”: “Observe in page 78 Finis is pasted on, and the catch word is covered with a piece of blank paper to hide the defficiency [ sic ]. Have since procured the wanting leaf”. Sure enough, the word “Finis” has been clipped from another copy and pasted at
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
LOUDER THAN WORDS
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