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10 BUTTS, Mary. Armed with Madness. London: Wishart & Company, 1928 “Eliot and I are working on a parallel” First edition, first impression, trade issue, of the author’s second novel, “a modernist treatment of the grail myth” ( ODNB ). The first edition is scarce, particularly so with the dust jacket, this being a remarkably attractive example. This novel, Butts’s first to be published in the UK, combines Modernist concerns about the spiritual wilderness of the period with the powerful symbol of redemption and healing found in the Holy Grail. In a journal entry from 1927 Butts half-jokingly complains that Armed with Madness “might well have been called The Wasteland [ sic ]. Eliot always anticipates my titles . . . Eliot and I are working on a parallel, but what is interesting is that he is working on the San[c] Grail on its negative” (Kroll, p. 159). Butts, on the other hand, uses this novel to suggest “readily available cures for the condition of barrenness and sterility illustrated in Eliot’s poem” (ibid.). Butts’s writing remained somewhat overlooked until the 1980s when several of her novels were republished and her work has continued to receive growing scholarly interest. She is “now recognized as one of the most important and original modernist authors of the inter-war years” (Blondel, p. 1). A limited issue of 100 copies with four lithographed illustrations by Jean Cocteau was also produced, as well as a US edition later in 1928. Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in gilt. With dust jacket. Spine slightly cocked, spine ends and tips rubbed, dent to centre of rear board and rear endpapers, corresponding puncture to rear panel of dust jacket, rear board and onto rear endpapers, light offsetting to endpapers; a very good copy, contents bright and clean, in the like jacket, spine browned, edges very lightly creased. ¶ Nicholas Blondel, The Journals of Mary Butts , 2002; Amy Clukey, “Enchanting Modernism: Mary Butts, Decadence, and the Ethics of Occultism”, Modern Fictions
9 BULGAKOV, Mikhail. Dyavoliada, rasskazy (“Diaboliad; short stories”). Moscow: Nedra, 1925 The author’s first book – banned in 1929 Rare first edition, first impression, of Bulgakov’s first book and the only one printed in the Soviet Union in his lifetime. Diaboliad contains five irreverent, satirical, and imaginative stories: the title story, the novella “The Fatal Eggs”, “No. 13, the Elpit-Workers Commune”, “A Chinese Tale”, and “The Adventures of Chichikov”. In the latter story, Gogol’s antihero from Dead Souls is transplanted to Soviet Russia, where he finds life equally bemusing. Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of the dystopian novel We (1921), who later befriended Bulgakov, hailed the author’s “true instinct in choosing a compositional setting: fiction, rooted in life, fast as in a movie . . . from the author, apparently, you can expect good work”. But the general critical reception was hostile and it is said that some of the 5,000 copies printed were confiscated. In 1929 Glavpolitprosvet, the main censorship organ of Soviet Russia, placed the book on its list of banned titles, and no further books by Bulgakov were printed in the Soviet Union during his lifetime. Octavo. Original wrappers printed in black and red. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box lettered in red by the Chelsea Bindery. Rebacked with part of the lettering on title of front wrapper supplied in facsimile, restoration to extremities of wrappers, occasional restoration to page edges, ownership inscription to wrapper and title page and a few ink annotations to the text, some marks within, restoration notwithstanding still a nice copy of a rare and fragile book in its original wrappers. ¶ Blum, Z apreshchennie knigi russkih literatorov (“Banned books by Russian authors”) 1917–1991 , #95; Sobranie Sochineniy, Mikhail Bulgakov, vol. 2, 1989. £4,500 [131768]
INEXHAUSTIBLE LIFE
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