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brief, if unilluminating, passages about Legman’s career as a writer of pornography. And there is an entertaining account of his encounters with the bibliographical establishment when he submitted (ultimately successfully) an article on Caxton to The Library . But Legman’s main preoccupations are the appetites of youth. Food and (particularly) sex drive his narrative, the sex being described in a manner heavily influenced by the early prose of Henry Miller. For anyone interested in the seamier side of the New York book world in the 1940s reading this book is like panning for gold: occasional nuggets amid much tedium. It is sobering to reflect that Legman died at the age of 82. Unambitious calculation suggests that are at least 5,000 more penis-related pages to come. Caveat lector. ‘pick of the bunch’ was how Nicolas Barker described the first cat- alogue of J. & J. Lubrano in 1979. Forty indomitable years on, John and Jude Lubrano have just held, on October 6th, their first online auction of Music & Dance. The material is drawn from across the board of clas- sical music and includes manuscript, printed and photographic works. If it succeeds, more auctions may follow. It is of special interest to us at the book collector on account of the long series of auction prices in our archive from the days when music and books were sold together. There are 469 lots, no reserves, and the premium is a modest 15%. We wish the Lubranos all good fortune. ‘wh’, as it’s being called (by people getting over-familiar with Wuthering Heights rather than W.H.Auden) has given the whole Brontë clan lots of column inches this year, which is the 200th anniversary of Emily’s birth. ‘The twentieth century’s favourite nineteenth-century novel’ is how the critic John Sutherland described the book. Elizabeth Hardwick wrote of the sisters, ‘They were gifted, well-educated, especially self-educated – and desperate.’ Their books have spawned a multitude of children: films, songs, sequels, prequels, adaptations, abbreviations, elongations, every conceivable variation, even a play starring Cli V Richard as Heathcli V . In its no. 6017 the TLS opened the throttle and went full out at the subject. ‘Still ba Z ing, still strange’ was its strapline and then it quoted Julian Barnes from his novel The Only Story : ‘Would you rather love the more, and su V er the more; or love the less and su V er the less?’ This, says the TLS, goes to the heart of WH. To the heart of life itself, some might add.
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