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90 TZARA, Tristan. Vingt-cinq poèmes. Zurich: Collection Dada, 1918 Inscribed by the author First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on third page “Hommage Tristan Tzara Zurich Hôtel Seehof, Schifflände”. This early publication of Tzara marks his first collaboration with Hans Arp. This is “an important document of the Dada movement by two of its founders. The non-objective woodcuts are similar to Arp’s wooden reliefs and collages at this time and their free form is expressive of the automatic quality valued by the Dadaists” ( The Artist and the Book , 2). Small quarto. Original wrappers, printed label to front cover. With 10 woodcuts in the text by Hans Arp, 2 of which are repeated. Wrappers and contents lightly toned, repairs along joints and to splits to wrappers. A very good copy. £8,750 [153801] 91 WARNER, Sylvia Townsend. Lolly Willowes, or the Loving Huntsman. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926 did THE AUTHOR PRACTIce witchcraft? First edition, first impression, of the author’s first novel, signed by her on the front free endpaper, and uncommon thus, even more so in the attractive jacket. The novel’s “mixture of fantasy and acerbic wit in this story of a disregarded woman who turns to witchcraft as the only practical way of asserting herself had a wide appeal, and the book was a considerable success” ( ODNB ). The unique and vivid insights into witchcraft that Sylvia Townsend Warner provides in Lolly Willowes left her close friend Virginia Woolf perplexed; when questioned by Woolf
how she knew so much about witches, Warner simply replied: “Because I am one” (Harman). It is therefore perhaps no surprise that the novel “made many speculate whether its author actually practised witchcraft herself. [Its] themes – its view of Satan as a liberator, and its feminist critique of Christianity as a pillar of patriarchy – make it still a relevant read amidst the current occult revival” (Faxneld, p. 29). In her writing Warner “shares as many similarities as differences with the high modernists who dominated the literary landscape of the interwar period” (Plock, p. 725). She was close friends with many key authors of the period, and had previously published a collection of poetry, The Espalier (1925).
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INEXHAUSTIBLE LIFE
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