A 1966 Guide to London

With these popular paperback ‘lowdown’ guides to London the trick is to date them without looking at the title page or other publishing information. What is needed is a perfunctory whiz through some of the contents and then a guess. I guessed at 1968. It turned out that it came out in 1966, when its well informed editor was in his twenties. I say ‘well-informed’ but ‘Oonter ‘ Davies ( as Private Eye dubbed him) does call on a long list of specialist contributors, including such household names as Dominic Behan, David Benedictus, Chaim Bermant, John Betjeman, Anthony Blond, Quentin Crewe, Maureen Duffy, Martin Green, Tim Heald, Michael Horowitz, George Mikes, Philip O’ Connor, Jonathan Routh, and a few less well known writers.

One party game might be to identify who wrote what. Some are pretty easy. John Betjeman almost certainly wrote on London churches. I would guess that the surrealist poet Philip O’Connor wrote the chapter on the Underworld or Down and Out, mainly because he was down and out for most of his chaotic life. Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan and an active IRA supporter as well as a prolific songwriter and playwright, probably contributed the bit on Irish London and possibly some of the material on pubs, since he liked a pint or three. Jonathan Routh, humorist, prankster and the man behind the British version of ‘ Candid Camera’ , could have written on a number of subjects, but it’s possible that he wrote on ‘ homosexual London’, since he published several little books on the subject of the best loos. His first book on this subject is actually mentioned under ‘ Lavatories ‘ on page 147. Chaim Bermant must surely have written the very scholarly piece on Jewish London and may have contributed to other chapters. The highly successful publisher Anthony Blond , a bon viveur who lost his exhibition to New College Oxford through his over indulgence in ‘ the joys of drink, people, parties, fancy waistcoats, foreign travel and falling in love—mostly with young men ‘ could have contributed to the chapters on restaurants and night clubs, but may also, as a bisexual, have been the author of the piece on homosexual London, which shows a very sympathetic view towards the plight of gay men just before homosexual relations were made legal in 1967

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More famous lost City taverns

*14 Fleet Street the site of the Rainbow Coffee House*

The Rainbow and Sweeney Todd’s

At 14, Fleet Street, stood ‘The Rainbow’, which opened its doors in 1657 as one of the earliest coffee houses in Britain. It thrived as a coffee house into the eighteenth century, but it does not figure in Ralph Rylance’s The Epicure’s Almanack (1815), either as a coffee house or a tavern offering food. In 1866 John Timbs ( Curiosities of London ) reported that ‘ it has long been a tavern; all the old rooms have been swept away and a large and lofty dining- room erected in their place’

By 1897, when the novelist Arnold Bennett paid a visit, it had settled into its role as an old fashioned City pub and restaurant. Here is his diary entry for July 13^th 1897:

‘I lunched at the Rainbow, a type of City restaurant which is passing away. A large dark room sombrely furnished in mahogany and gas-lighted , even in the sunshine of a hot July day. In the centre a table at which a stout carver in white cap, coat and apron, carves the saddle of mutton and the sirloin of beef—dishes which are never varied and of which the customers seem never to tire. Here come lawyers and other homes d’affaires of middle-age to who luncheon is a serious meal, not to be ordered without minute obstructions to the obsequious water. ‘ Do you call this underdone ?’ , a portly customer asks sharply. ‘Yes, sir‘. ‘Well I don’t. Take It back’. ‘Yes, sir’. Here one drinks either stout from a tankard, or some sound wine; but if one orders wine, one gives the waiter directions as to the temperature. It is de rigeur. The door leading into the dining-room is labelled ‘coffee-room‘ and there is a significant notice ‘ Ladies dining room upstairs ‘. Ladies are not willingly admitted to the ground floor, and those women, if any, who dared to pass that door labelled ‘ coffee-room’ would be requested to leave , or at least pointed at as unwomanly. This is one of the last strongholds of the conservative male. Yet we males respect ourselves; or we have a regard for the decencies. ‘Gentlemen are requested not to smoke pipes in this establishment.’

Writing in the era of the ‘ New Woman ‘, Bennett is conscious of the discrimination against women in the public sphere, but it is to his credit that he pointed this out, even though the comment was made in a diary.

In the 1920’s the journalist Anthony Bertram ( see earlier Jot ) was another writer who haunted the ‘Rainbow.’ J. C. Squire and Hilaire Belloc were fellow drinkers and both favoured whiskers. According to Bertram, Squire was very difficult to identify.

‘ Whiskers and moustaches grew on and off him with amazing rapidity. Once in the Rainbow…Squire came in particularly hirsute, and Priestley said to me: ‘ I don’t think a man has any right to muck about with his face like that. A man’s face belongs to his friends. I’ve got to make up my mind all over again whether I want to know Jack Squire.’

Belloc used to come into the ‘Rainbow’ too, delicately and permanently whiskered, and often accompanied by Beachcomber, about who I could tell so many stories that I cannot begin: of how he listened at a pillar box till a crown collected; of how he posed as the man in charge of a charabanc; of how he made barbers sing in chorus; of how he jumped on his hat in the middle of South Harting High Street and shook the local grocer by the scruff of his neck; of how he roared like a lion in the Strand; of how, in short, he lived up to his fantastic imagination .’

The journalist ‘ Beachcomber’, alias J. B. Morton, wrote the ‘ By the Way’ column for the Daily Express from 1924 to 1975. At first he wrote the column in the offices of the Daily Express in Fleet Street. As the column only took a few hours, and he always wrote a week in advance, his afternoons were free for socialising. However,

following his marriage in 1927 and his subsequent move to Sussex, his drinking days with his fellow journalists were severely curtailed. Nevertheless, he became friends with another Sussex resident and fellow Catholic, Hilaire Belloc, with who he shared some political views. The pillar box anecdote is certainly true. According to one source, ‘while walking through Guildford one day with Gerald Barry, Morton stopped at a pillar box. He talked into its opening. ‘Are you alright, my little man? Don’t worry, we’ll soon get you out.’ Soon, a concerned crowd gathered to see who was trapped inside. Someone summoned the fire brigade to help, while Morton and Barry made a discrete exit. Events like this were quite frequent: on another occasion he littered Virginia’s Woolf’s front doorstep with dozens of empty, quart-sized brown beer bottles.

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Upper class jokes

Taken from Best Upper Crust Jokes by Edward Phillips (1974)

Don’t see much of Chauncy de Pugh these days, old boy .’

‘ No—he’s become a tremendous snob since he succeeded to the title.’

‘What’s that go to do with it ?’

‘ Well, he refuses to travel in the same car with his chauffeur’.

Noticing that his friend had a very handsome-looking red setter with him, the first nobleman said, ‘ I say, old chap , you’ve got a new dog!’

Yes, relied the second, ‘ I got him for the wife, actually.’

‘By jove, said his friend. ‘ That was a damned good swop.’

Did you hear the one about the very rich aristocrat who bought his son a slum?

He wanted him to have the things he’d missed when he was a child.

A prospective Tory candidate for Parliament was addressing a constituency meeting and was being continually interrupted by a Socialist heckler.

‘ Let me ask you a question’, shouted the heckler.’ Have you ever earned a penny by the sweat of your brow?’

‘Certainly not, answered the nobleman. ‘Our family never perspire ‘.

Remind you of a certain member of the Royal Family ?

Did you hear the one about the neighbourhood that’s so high-class, when the children write rude words on garden walls, they’re in Latin ?

Remind you of a certain former Tory MP ?

An old lady was explaining her duties to the new maid.

‘ Now from time to time’, she said, ‘ you will have to help the butler upstairs’.

‘ Oh, that all tight, ma’am, said the maid’. ‘I like a drink myself occasionally’.

An English nobleman registered at an hotel in Mexico. The receptionist, looking at the register, said pleasantly in English, ‘Ah—-you are a foreigner.’

‘Certainly not’, said the nobleman. ‘I’m English !’

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Some recollections of Yeats and other characters in early twentieth century London

In ‘ Letters to my Great-Grandson ‘ ( in The Book of Fleet Street, ed. T. Michael Pope,1931) the journalist and art historian Anthony Bertram (1897 – 1978), pretends to be writing to his grandson in 1985 when he recollects seeing and hearing W. B. Yeats in 1921.

‘I remember going to tea with him when he lived in the Broad ( the old name for Shorthand Street at Oxford, before the University was absorbed by Pitman’s). The house was pulled down as long ago as 1929. I followed a servant up a steep flight of stairs and was introduced into a dim book-lined study in the attic. Yeats, with flowing tie and white hair straying forward, was standing before a high reading desk with tall candles burning on either side, and he was reading the Kelmscott ‘ Chaucer ‘. He signed to me without speaking, indicated the illustration before him and then proceeded slowly and reverently to0 turn the pages…’

‘I remember he came to lunch with me once in college. Oh, I was aware that Yeats was a celebrity all right. You see, he was of the older generation. So, I had the best college silver and ruined myself on wines and borrowed a coffee machine like an alchemist’s retort, a wonderful contraption of glass globes and spirit- lamps .My other guests were Father Martindale, a Jesuit of some notability, and Wilfred Childe, a delicate taper-like poet who afterwards became frightened by the vice and riotous of life and retired to Leeds. Yeats talked about fairies and just when he was quoting with wonderful sonority, the coffee contraption burst. Yeats did not even pause in his quotation, and I sat watching the black flood spread, not daring to interrupt. I do not know whether he failed to notice the calamity or mere ignored it. In either case he was superb.

I was very young then and I find that I made notes of some things that Yeats said on that occasion. Here they ae fo0r you, just as they were written down in 1921:’

‘Life is a striving after the antithesis. The passionate Landor wass the Phidias of poetry; the gregarious Shelley worshipped solitude; the active, quick Morris created men vague and detached.’

‘Christ was the antithesis of classicism.’

‘The man who gives up seeking for his antithesis becomes a don, a journalist or a country parson—something not quite human.’

‘The antithesis of a man is that virtue which is mo0st remote from him, yet not unattainable.’

‘The canker of modern art is the failure to recognise evil.’

‘Without horror there is a weak perception of beauty. Horror is a foil to beauty.’

‘Morris would not produce drama because the actors would not chant.’

‘Lionel Johnson remarked to me that not to believe in eternal punishment is to be grossly vulgar.’

‘Wisdom’s life is bitter. I have striven all my life to drug my intellect with philosophy. If I only read and thought about literature I should have nothing to write about.’

‘The key to philosophy is the law of history.’

‘ I am convinced that there are minds without bodies. I feel their presence and sometimes they are greater than me and dominate me.’

‘Milton is not enjoyed because of bad poets and worse theologians.’

So you see the sort of conversation it was and why the bursting of a coffee-contraption could not be allowed to interrupt…’

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Literary pubs of the Square Mile

3) The Red Lion, Poppin’s Court.

Among London’s ‘ lost pubs ‘ The Red Lion, which was tucked away in Poppin’s Court, off Fleet Street, just before Ludgate Circus, is one of the least known, although, as we shall see, it ought to be celebrated. A frequent haunt of writers and journalists working in the Street of Shame, it is the subject of an affectionate portrait in The Book of Fleet Street ( 1931), by Clennell Wilkinson, who wrote for The London Mercury. Clennell christened it ‘ The Compositor’s Arms due to the fact that it stood close the Head Office of the printers’ union. The author was a frequenter of this pub from October 1921 to August 1925, but after he had finished going there he never returned.

‘ It was the discreetist little pub you ever saw…and formed part of the great estate of the Bishops of Ely, stretching southwards from Holborn to the very banks of the river at Blackfriars. But you might go past the entrance to that court without noticing that there was a pub there…’

‘The proprietor, a sturdy forthright fellow, who rather liked to have us about the place—would in fact do anything for us except read us—is now alas, dead. So are George Mair and Jimmy Allison, and Bohun Lynch, and John Freeman, and too many others of his customers of those days. But I like to think that the Perfect Barmaid, who afterward became his wife, is still presiding with that gentle, dignified efficiency of hers, of not over this establishment, then over some other…

The connection between pubs and literature is less marked today than it was in the days when Englishmen could really write. Shakespeare would be utterly puzzled to understand why even now I feel I ought to make some apology for mentioning The ( London) Mercury in this connection; he would be astonished if he could see the thin sneer with which these lines would probably be read by some of his most enthusiastic modern admirers. Big drinks are out of fashion—that’s the truth. If they had served American cocktails in Poppin’s Court—but I digress…’

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Fleet street in the early twentieth century

It is hard to believe, sometimes, that the Fleet Street of today was once, even as recently as the late nineteen sixties, the thriving hub of the newspaper industry. Today, walking down the thoroughfare that links Ludgate Hill with the City and the West End– one comes across familiar names and images celebrated in the annals of journalism—El Vinos, the Old Cheshire Cheese — and shapes such as the domineering Art Deco ‘ black Lubyanka’ once home to the Daily Express, and the former Reuters HQ at number 85, as well as name plates that are still speak of twentieth century journalism But compared to 1968 when your teenage Jotter first explored the area, Fleet Street and its side streets are almost unrecognisable.

Various books published during its heyday capture some of the excitement of working in Fleet Street, but one stands out. The Book of Fleet Street, edited by T. Michael Pope in 1931 collects together recollections of some the big hitters who cut their teeth in the Street and who went on to even greater things—men like Hilaire Belloc, Gerald Bullet. D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Robert Lynd, Arthur Machen , J. B. Morton, J. B Priestly, Gerald Barry, Edward Shanks, J.C Squire, Alec Waugh and Henry Williamson —but also gives space to the memories of lesser journalists, such as George Blake ( not the spy) , Christopher Saltmarshe, Edith Shackleton. T. Earle Welby and George Stern. Although the book’s editor, T(homas) Michael Pope ( 1876 – 1930), did not supply his own recollections, this may have been through modesty, as one of the contributors suggests, or more likely because he was ill at the time. Sadly he died before the book came out.

Pope was a lesser figure than any of these, and one with a very different background. Son of a Kennington grocer, he did not attend university and by 1901 was working as a ledger clerk, while earning extra money contributing to such magazines as Academy, The Boys Own Paper ,The John O’London weekly and the Daily Graphic, where he was a leader writer. In this role, his contributions were beginning to impress Gerald ( later Sir Gerald ) Barry, then a schoolboy in Lowestoft, and Pope’s junior by twenty-two years. In his recollection Barry paid tribute to the older man who had made him a journalist.

‘ My whole reading was his and his colleagues; half my thoughts were theirs; even in school hours we were not divided, for the dictation we received was chosen from his leading articles, and I remember he displayed a creditable fondness for long and difficult words…

Before we examine some of the recollections of Fleet Street it might b instructive to compare the memories of yet another hack, the gifted poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson, who when the book came out was working on the London edition of the Yorkshire Post. In his wonderfully funny, often moving, and brilliantly written Crest on the Silver (1950) Grigson cast a baleful eye on Fleet Street and its denizens. While Barry may have been impressed by the older Pope, the young Grigson, fresh out of Oxford, was not enamoured of his senior colleagues on the Post. Some he selected out for particular scorn:

‘ Some would accept any ruling, write anything, condemn or praise anything, knowing to a nicety the prejudices of the editor. One of them, an old man again, well educated, well paid, always in trouble over money and his children, on whose education he had spent almost nothing of his high earnings, appeared to have only one desire left as a journalist: to slip past the subs, the assistant editor, the editor, all of whom he despised, some half-concealed indecency which read a second time would refer beyond cavil to the female organs of sex..’

‘ I began to learn something of the pitiful nastiness and dirtiness of one man towards another. I watched a case rigged against another young journalist to remove him and make a place for an elderly and useless and inoffensive little drunk who was out of luck but had been a colleague once of the intriguer. I watched with surprise machinations against myself—with surprise not because they were against me, but because I had not met, even at a public school, the deliberate planning of evil for the sake of advantage…’

Another experience which I had was of the enmity of a middle-age woman long connected with journalism but worried by a husband who not longer earned much and by a family who had still to be educated. I seemed in her way and in the way of one of her favourites. But her enmity was more sinister, more direct and more difficult to counter. I was too intolerant ( by this time I was editing the London Letter) to accept the badness of her work and to disregard her as one of the irritants inseparable from any job. So we fought. I might as well have fought with a female troll whose eyelids opened from top to bottom. I underestimate her tenacity and her sense of power and knew nothing then of the extreme difficulties which egged her to defend her power of earning at any cost…’

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Don’t ! An Anglo-American edition of 1880

A few years ago we featured a selection of ‘ Don’ts’ from a manual published in the mid twentieth century. This time we are looking at a reprint of an Anglo-American edition dating from 1880 of a best-selling manual of ‘Mistakes and Improprieties ‘ that appeared from the famous publishing house of Field and Tuer. Some of these extracts are accompanied by comments from your Jotter.

At Table

Don’t, as an invited guest, be late to dinner. This is a wrong to your host, to other guests, and to the dinner.

Don’t seat yourself until the ladies are seated or, at a dinner party, until your host or hostess gives the signal. Don’t introduce, if you introduce at all, after the company is seated.

The advice regarding ladies has been redundant for many decades, as sexual equality is now generally recognised.

Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin, or spread it upon your breast. Bibs and tuckers are for the nursery. Don’t spread you napkin over your lap; let it fall over your knee.

What purpose, one may ask, does a napkin serve on someone’s knee ?

Don’t serve gentleman guests at your table before all the ladies are served, including those who are members of your own household.

Regarding the advice of serving ladies first, this again is outdated.

Don’t eat soup from the end of a spoon, but from the side. Don’t gurgle or draw in your breath or make other noises when eating soup. Don’t ask for a second service of soup.

It’s quite awkward, actually, to ‘eat ‘ soup from the end of a spoon. Try it, if you don’t believe me. I agree fully with the ban on noisy eating, especially the use of the expression ‘ Aaaaaah ‘ to denote pleasure.

Don’t bite your bread. Break it off . Don’t break your bread into your soup.

Good advice. Depositing bits of bread into your soup is the equivalent to ‘ dunking’ biscuits into cups of tea. An abhorrent practice tolerated when children do it, but intolerable when done by adults . Grow up.

Don’t eat with your knife. Never pout your knife into your mouth. Go into any restaurant and observe. Don’t load up the fork with food with your knife, and then cart it , as it were to your mouth. Take up the fork what it can easily carry, and no more.

Any restaurant ? This may have been the case at Simpson’s or the Savoy in 1880, but visit a ‘ greasy spoon ‘ today and you might see a number of knives in mouths, especially when there is no spoon handy to gather up that lovely Bisto gravy. Mmmmm.

Don’t use a steel knife with fish. A silver knife is now placed by the side of each plate for the fish course.

In the era before stainless steel was perfected for culinary use (c1915) posh knives often has steel blades and silver handles. Naturally, ordinary steel immediately discolours and corrodes when it come into contact with even mildly acidic food. But fish is not acidic, so it is unlikely to affect steel fish knife blades. Moreover, it is very difficult to get a cutting edge on silver, so one would not use a silver knife to cut up meat. But it cannot be denied that special silver fish knives were used in up- market Victorian households.

Don’t eat vegetables with a spoon. Eat them with a fork. The rule is not to eat anything with a spoon that can be eaten with a fork. Even ices are now often eaten with a fork.

Sound and sensible advice in 1880 as it is in 2025. That is except the bit about eating ices with a fork. Cake, yes. But ice cream? Surely, if it is starting to melt, it would drip through the tines of the fork.

Don’t leave your knife and fork on your plate when you send it for a second supply.

This is pretty obvious practical advice. These implements get in the way of the second helping of food, which is an inconvenience to your host or hostess.

Don’t apply to your neighbour to pass articles when the servant is at hand.

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A further helping of G. F. Sims

George Eliot, The Legend of Jubal and other poems (Blackwood 1874). First Edition. Spine faded and some foxing on the endpapers, otherwise a very good copy. Bookplate. £8.50.

J. W. Cross (ed), George Eliot’s Life as related in her Letters and Journals. Arranged and Edited by her Husband J.W.Cross. In three vols. Blackwood 1885. Original cloth marked and worn, and the hinges strained. An uncommon book, and one that is much in demand. £10 No copy found online

Too right ! The condition of this copy attests to its value as a source of information on Eliot’s life. The novelist is worshipped by her legion of fans to the extent that the longstanding George Eliot Society is one of the best supported members of the Alliance of Literary Societies, of which your blogger is a committee member. She may not be as trendy as Jane Austen nowadays, but as a female novelist and intellectual she is internationally esteemed.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chatto 1926. The scarce first English edition. Spine slightly faded and worn. Name on the endpaper. £15.00 . A copy rebound in modern leather is currently priced online at £3,300

This year is the centenary of one of the greatest American novels. Actual firsts can change hands for six figures and although the item for sale is only a first English edition, without it appears, a jacket, its value has jumped from £15 to over £1,000 for one copy online in poor condition since this Sims catalogue appeared.

Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever, Cape 1956. First edition. Presentation copy to his friend Leonard Russell : ‘ To Leonard on whose back I ride. With affection from Ian’.

Fine copy in d.w. £30.00 £3,000 – £10,000

An early, sought after Bond title. Russell was a journalist and a champion of Fleming’s work.

Ian Fleming, For Your Eyes Only, Cape 1960. First edition. Presentation copy to his friend Leonard Russell, the literary editor of the Sunday Times. Inscribed: ‘ To Leonard whom I miss from Ian’. Fine copy in d.w. £30.00 £3000+

Lucky Leonard to have two Flemings presented to him by the author.

Ludovico Maria Sinistrari Frier Minor, Demoniality. Translated into English from the Latin ( with introduction and notes by the Rev. Montague Summers. Fortune Press N.D. This is the special issue of 90 copies on Arnold unbleached had-made paper, numbered and signed by Summers, bound in full vellum, gilt with yapp edges. Rare. In perfect state. £20.00 £800 unsigned.

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Firsts Among Equals

Sometimes there is disagreement among specialist book dealers concerning which books by modern authors who later achieved fame were the first to appear, as opposed to which books by authors who achieved some sort of press attention early in their career. It all depends, I suppose, how one can judge fame. In a catalogue issued by Firsts & Company of New York City around the mid eighties, and subtitled ‘ 100 First Books of Authors ‘, the authors selected are not all famous. One thing is certain, however, all the authors ( famous or not ) are arranged in alphabetical order.

1) Margaret Atwood. The Edible Woman. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969. First edition, in d.j. Small, almost invisible tear lower edge of front panel, slightest wear to jacket, else fine. $250.00 Today £152

Certainly a famous by a now celebrated writer whose novels have been televised and adapted for the silver screen. As the Ahearnes point out, she published eight titles in limited editions between 1961, when Double Persephone appeared, and 1969. The Edible Woman, therefore, is her first ‘ regular’ novel.

2) W. H Auden, Poems. London: Faber, 1930. First edition. Blue-green wrappers. Unusual fine state of this fragile book, generally seen in poor condition. With publisher’s announcement laid in. In a slipcase. $ 600.00. The Ahearnes have it at $350.00 in 1986. Today it might fetch £350.

A case in point. This is not Auden’s ‘ first’ book, but his second. The first was the legendary Poems of 1928, which was printed by Stephen Spender on a clunky machine designed to print chemist’s labels. After printing a few copies the machine broke down and Spender was forced to complete the tiny edition by running to the Oxford University Press, who duly obliged. Poems is exceedingly rare– so scarce that copies change hands at over £30,000 each, if you are lucky enough to find one.

It is puzzling to learn that Auden’s second book was ‘ fragile ‘ and ‘generally seen in poor condition ‘. Though it is true that the book was such a sensation when it appeared that many who bought a copy may have read it ‘ to death ‘, it wasn’t particularly fragile’, unlike the Poems of two years earlier. If any book of poems deserved a slipcase to protect it, this is this one.

7) Saul Bellow, Dangling Man. London: John Lehmann, 1946. First English edition, in d.j. Fine. Bixby A1b. $300.00. Today £190.

So not the true first edition , which was published in America.

9) Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky. London: Lehman, 1949. First edition in d.j. Slight clipping to top and bottom of jacket spine, and jacket price-clipped, else very good. $200.00

10) Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. London: Smith, Elder. 1846. First edition, second issue, being the remaindered sheets of the first state issued by the new publisher, with cancelled title-page and ads for the Bronte’s books at the rear. Spine and edges darkened, chipping to head and tail of spine, else fine. $400.00 Today £2,000.

According to the Ahearnes, copies of the true first, which was published by Aylott and Jones in 1846 and valued at $7,500 in 1985, was published by Smith and Elder , using the remaindered sheets, in 1848. As Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had both appeared in 1847, this would explain why Smith and Elder were proud to advertise these best-selling novels in their 1848 edition of Poems. As the Aylott and Jones issue of Poems is now prohibitively expensive, even for well-heeled Bronte fanatics, most fans would be glad to have the Smith and Elder second issue.

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G. F. Sims once again

Ralph Chubb, Woodcuts ( Andrew Block, 1928). One of 200 copies. Small 4to. Original lilac marbled boards. Slightly marked, but a nice copy. £5.00. Today £200 +

There has been a revival of interest in this poet and illustrator in recent years. Back in the early seventies he was hardly known beyond a select circle of admirers, hence the low price. Chubb ( 1892 – 1960), like his contemporary E. E. Bradford, a parish priest in the Fens, is now a gay icon whose extraordinary life and celebration of ‘ lads love ‘ has attracted many to his work, which has echoes of William Blake, though his verse is nothing like as inspiring. Chubb’s home in Berkshire is still there and the shed in which he printed his books and pamphlets also remains. See a previous Jot for a fuller account of his life and work. It is unlikely that there will ever be a blue plaque to him somewhere in his native Harpenden.

A. E. Coppard, Silver Circus (Cape, 1928) Special edition of 125 copies on hand-made paper, signed by the author, bound in full velum with a green leather lettering piece, gilt. Fine copy of this scarce book. £10.00. Today £200 +

A hundred years ago, at the advent of the craze for modern first editions, Coppard was King of the Pile. Articles were written on him and his rather enigmatic short stories. Most of his books seemed to be printed in tasteful ‘ special editions ‘. All the experts agreed that here was an author worth investing in. Though his reputation waned somewhat in the late ‘thirties, he was still admired in the late sixties, when some of his short stories were televised. Fast forward to the noughties and Gen Z has blank faces at the mention of his name. Still, for all this, he is still arguably the most famous person to hail from Folkestone.

Note: Sims offered five other copies of Coppard titles, nearly all ‘ special ‘ editions, priced at between £7.00 and £15.00. Don’t expect them to rise much in value in the future, though.

Frances Cornford, Travelling Home and other poems. Illustrated by Christopher Cornford. ( Cresset Press, 1948) . First edition. Fine in d.w. £1.50. Today £20

Baron Corvo, “ Lytel Seynt Hew”. Contained in The Universal Review edited by Harry Quilter, September- December 1888. Pp 585 -591 contain this poem by the “Rev. Frederick Rolph”, each page being decorated by one of his drawings. Thick 4to, original red cloth, gilt. £12.50.

C. Day Lewis, Ten Singers. An Anthology. Fortune & Merriman, 1925. First edition. The Poet Laureate’s first publication—a scarce anthology published in the early days of the Fortune Press. Printed on hand-made paper and bound in hand-made paper wrappers. Fine Copy. £7.50. Today £ 25.

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Another catalogue from G. F. Sims, rare bookseller extraordinaire

This is the second catalogue of rare books issued by G. F. Sims that we have reviewed in Jot 101.Sims was regarded as a particularly rara avis among dealers, principally because his catalogues were chock full of scarce and interesting items—not only printed books, many of which were signed and uncorrected proof copies, but manuscripts. In the eyes of some collectors these catalogues were worth collecting in themselves.

In this catalogue No. 79, seemingly dating from the early seventies, there are several delectable items, including a number of titles from the Fortune Press and many others containing inscriptions from the author. Some of Sims’ prices seem pretty reasonable today—so reasonable that we have taken the liberty of including the prices that they might fetch in 2025. However, one annoying feature of this particular catalogue is the absence of information regarding pagination. Most potential buyers would surely be interested to know how many pages an item contains. For instance, how long is The Atlantic Anthology? If one was shelling out £25 in 1972, this is critical information.

1) We should start with an author whose letter interleaved in the inscribed book boasts about the rising market value of this particular volume. The author is Paul Ableman and the book is I Hear Voices ( Olympic Press, Paris 1958). Today £8. 24p.

‘ …it is a first edition, and actually, I gather, it is acquiring slight bibliophile value—someone told me that on the NY second-hand market, it was fetching twenty-five bucks…’

Actually its rise in value ( if true) is genuinely surprising considering it had only been published fifteen or so years before. Ableman ( 1927 – 2006) was an experimental novelist who also wrote plays and specialised in that very modern genre, TV novelisations. He was responsible, for instance, for turning ‘Porridge’, ‘Dad’s Army’ and ‘Shoestring’, into novels. He also wrote non-fiction, including a rarish pamphlet which argued that feminism had betrayed its roots and had turned into an anti-men campaign. Ableman, by all accounts, led an extremely bohemian life in his Hampstead eyrie. His friend Margaret Drabble, who provided a preface for a reprint of I Hear Voices, painted a very amusing picture of life chez Ableman.

2) Christopher Whitfield, The Village and other poems ( Alcuin Press, 1928). No. 1 of 100 copies on handmade paper. £5.50. Today a signed copy is a small bargain at £36.

Whitfield ( 1902 – 67 ), a budding poet, migrated to Chipping Campden, possibly to be close to the town’s greatest resident, F. L. Griggs, the visionary etcher and Arts and Crafts champion, whom he befriended and helped during his later years. While there he kept a fascinating diary which was published by his son Paul in 2012. In his superb biography, F. L. Griggs, the Architecture of Dreams (1999) Jerrold Northrop Moore refers frequently to Whitfield and his diary, which was then unpublished. Griggs died in 1938 and Whitfield followed him twenty-nine years later.

3) Atlantic Anthology ( Fortune Press, 1945). Uncorrected proofs for the first edition. ‘This the publisher’s first page proof without the contributors’ names on the title page or the illustrations… Quite likely a unique state of this interesting anthology with contributions by Lawrence Durrell, John Peale Bishop, Henry Miller, Allen Tate and Wallace Stevens…’ £25. Today £57.

A pretty big price for this anthology, but Sims is probably right about its rarity. In contrast, the next Fortune Press item from Sims is A Fortune Anthology (n.d.), which contains contributions from at least three of those writing for the above, but is priced at just £5.

10) Light Blue Dark Blue (1960). First edition. Contributors include Ted Hughes, Dom Moraes and Sylvia Plath. £7.50. Today just £7.00, somewhat bizarrely.

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French slang in 1894

‘In France most people talk French, but in Paris most Parisians talk slang.’

Anar de la Grenouillere, The Continong (1894).

So said the author of this best-selling guide to travelling in France. He offered twelve pages of examples, but here is a small selection, with the occasional intervention from your Jotter.

Va falloir abouler, mon vieux You will have to stump up, old fellow.

Allez vous asseoir. Go along with you.

Il a une araignee dans le plafond. He has got a bee in his bonnet.

Se renvoyer la balle. Log-rolling.

Baptiser. To dilute wine with water.

Cette maison est une vraie baraque. This house is a wretched place, a miserable shanty.

Bassiner. To bore to death.

Monter un bateau, To impose upon one.

Becot. A kiss

Bernique. Not a bit of it.

Beugler. To bellow out. Also to weep.

If a fait son beurre. He has feathered his nest.

Bidard. A lucky chap.

Devisser son billard. To kick the bucket.

Avoir une biture. To be drunk.

Je n’y vois que du bleu. I can’t make head or tail of it.

Blinde. Boozed.

Ferme la boite. Shut up. Boite also means Public School.

Ca me botte. It suits me to a t.

Ce restaurant est un vrai bouchon. This restaurant is a nasty dirty place.

Bouffer. To guzzle.

Bouillon d’onze heures. Drowning or poisoning.

Bouis-bouis. A small theatre, low music hall, or restaurant.

Yeux en boule de loto. Goggle eyes.

Braise. Money.

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A Supper a la Grecque in 1788

The Brock brothers of Cambridge—famous illustrators of Jane Austen, Charles Lamb and Swift, among many others—were all fond of using Georgian antiques and costume as ‘props‘ in their illustrations to canonical texts. They collected all sorts of antiques for this purpose and for all we know they may even have indulged in ‘themed ‘dinner parties on special occasions. The celebrated architect Sir Albert Richardson (1880 -1964) was another ‘old fogey‘ in this respect. His house in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, which was inherited by his grandson, Simon Houfe (b.1942), the industrious author of many reference works on book illustration, was chock full of Georgian furniture and other antiques of the period. As someone with a strong sympathy for the Georgian era, it is easy to imagine him holding ‘Georgian dinner parties‘ complete with period crockery, eating utensils, silver candlesticks and cruets, with the host dressed in a Georgian wig, tunic breeches and shoes with steel buckles.

Doubtless in an age when the Classical world was revered, there must have been many re-enactments of Roman feasts. Perhaps the architect Sir John Soane, whose house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was ( and still is ) crammed with Classical sculpture, plaster casts and Classical relics of all kinds, had dinners that celebrated the Ancient World. We now know that the Victorian architect Thomas Talbot Bury attended what his trainee, John Wornham Penfold in his diary for 1846 called a ‘ Palladian Party ‘, although it is not known whether Bury was the host or guest at this occasion.

However, accounts of such parties that celebrated the Classical world are thin on the ground (or almost unknown ) in English literature, which is a shame. In French cultural history there is at least one. A description of the ‘ Supper a la Grecque ‘, which was eaten in Paris in 1788, in the year before the Bastille fell, is taken from Austin Dobson’s inestimable Bookman’s Budget (1917), and derived from the Souvenirs of the hostess Mme Vigee-Lebrun, ‘ the artist on whose habitually informal and unpretentious receptions it was a hastily improvised reception ‘ ( Dobson).

‘ Sitting one evening in expectation of her first guests, and listening to her brother’s reading of the Abbe Barthelemy’s recently published Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grece, it presently occurred to her to give an Attic character to her little entertainment. The cook was straightaway summoned, and ordered to prepare, secundum artem, specially classic sauces 1) for the eel and pullet of the evening. Some Etruscan vases were borrowed from a compliant collector of the premises, a large screen was decorated with drapery for a background, and the earliest comers, several very pretty women, were summarily costumed a la grecque out of the studio wardrobe. Lebrune-Pindare ( the then popular poet ), arriving opportunely, was at once unpowdered , divested of his side-curls, crowned as Anacreon with a property laurel-wreath, and robes in a purple mantle belonging to the Count de Parois, the accommodating owner of the pottery. The Marquis de Cubieres, following next, was speedily Hellenized, and made to send for his guitar, which his taste for the antique has apparently already prompted him to gild like a lyre. Other guests were similarly

1) Probably some combination of grated cheese, garlic, vinegar and leek…

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The Cradocks visit the Art Deco gem known as the Monseigneur Restaurant and Grill, 16 – 17 Jermyn Street, London

This eating place has undergone various transformations since its heyday in the nineteen thirties. In the mid fifties, when the following description was published by Fanny and Johnnie Cradock, it was the haunt of literary agents and publishers, among other types.

‘ As the Ivy restaurant is to the theatre, so Monseigneur’s is to that critical, cocktail of pedants, psychiatrists and introverts, the book publishers and the literary agents, the majority of whom are addicted to good food. A minority in our experience requires more of a wine than it is young and not corky. Only a fraction can distinguish between wines that have been fairly ordinarily handled and wines that have been cherished in the great tradition. For this reason the Monseigneur, where the food is never less than good and is sometimes more than very good, suits this brigade down to the socks. Signor Gualdi suffers from insufficient cellarage and keeps a relatively small stock of wines. Such as he keeps will serve you well—in their category, but his wine list does not soar vinously, as he will be the first to agree. Indeed, this courteous and experienced restaurateur soars above the only point of criticism to his own lasting success and the gratification of many contented diners. Among these, in other days, Signor Gualdi numbered the then Prince of Wales, who was particularly addicted to a house speciality of 1955, Choux Monsieur, a welcome and original addition to the hors d-oeuvre trolley. Equally agreeable is the house custom of a dish of the day, Silverside of Beef and Dumplings on Wednesday, Bouillabaisse on Fridays, are days in which we have interested ourselves profoundly. The coffee, too, is excellent, made on the proprietor’s remarkable little table Vesuvius at luncheon-time, when the restaurant seethes with custom and by night, when the tempo is suited to a more leisurely pattern of dining, which is pursued in great comfort.’

What the Cradocks omit to mention among their catty remarks on literary agents is that the Monseigneur Grill was a significant example of Art Décor design and internal décor. Certainly the RIBA seems to think so, as its archives contain a number of striking photographs showing the interior of the restaurant. Designed by architects William Henry White & Sons in 1931 and decorated by French decorators Marc-Henri and Laverdet ( who also designed the interior of the Whitehall Theatre in 1930 ) in a flamboyant style, its dining area was decidedly spacious, but lacked a certain intimacy.

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A third helping from The Continong

It is interesting to note that although the Paris Metro began its operation s in July 1900, this ‘ revised and updated ‘fourth edition of The Continong, which bears the date of 1906, omits to mention the existence of the famous rapid transportation system. This is bizarre, especially when under the heading ‘ Buses and Trams ‘ Mr Anar de la Grenouillere, complains about the extreme slowness of these old methods of transport which the Metro was partially designed to replace.

Phrases of politeness and greeting

‘ …never answer oui nor non along to a question; that’s English, but always add@ Monsieur, Madame, or Mademoiselle; that’s French.

…use the words Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle freely; sallow your insular pride, and do in France as the French do. Take of your hat to men as well as to ladies, when you meet them or come up to speak to them. If you have been introduced to a person, lady or gentleman, older than yourself, take off your hat first, when you meet him or her. Contrary to what is the custom in England, never wait for a lady to bow to you before taking your hat off to her.

When you are going to pay a call put your gloves on. When you are asked ti dinner, keep them on after being shown into the drawing- room until you go into the dining-.room. Don’t excuse yourself for wearing gloves when you are shaking hands. It is not only permissible but customary to shake hands with gloves on . Fashion has decreed it. The reason is this: in France gloves are not merely put on to prevent than hands from getting dirty, as seems to be the case in England, but they are part of the dress, i. e an ornament. Never wear soiled gloves when you are in Sunday attire…

Post-Offices.

When you get into a Post-Office in Paris, or in any other large French town, the first thing you notice is the foulness of the air. So, take a long breath before you go in…there are not nearly enough Post-Offices on Paris, and the result is that at certain hours of the day they are crowded beyond endurance. Moral:::::::: NEVER go to a Post-Office to buy a stamp, go to a Tobacconist’s…

N.B. Most Post-Offices are provided with a Cabine telephonique publique.

Letter boxes.

‘…There are a few pillar-boxes after the English style in Paris, but these have been painted a dark green colour, so they are not very conspicuous. They also sometimes have advertisements posted at the top of them; hence the pillar-box lloks like an ordinary pillar and not a receptacle for letters…

Tobacconists

…To most Frenchmen, English baccy tastes like hay, and is only fit for…Englishmen…

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Some of the best things ever said

Extracts from The 637 best things anybody ever said ( 1982) by Robert Byrne.

Everyone should believe in something; I believe I will have another drink.

Unknown.

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

Herb Caen.

I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.

Charles Schulz

Life is what happens when you are making other plans

John Lennon

I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen

The best way to get praise is to die

Italian proverb

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.

Fran Liebowitz

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off

Johnny Carson

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero

Beilby Porteus

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either

Robert Graves

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory

Paul Fix

Only the mediocre are always at their best

Jean Giraudoux

I’m going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose

S. I. Hayakawa

I live in the crown of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself

Samuel Johnson.

For every ten jokes thou hast got an hundred enemies

Laurence Sterne

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow

Oscar Wilde

He who laughs, lasts

Mary Pettibone Poole (c 1938)

The affair between Margot Asquith and Margo Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.

Dorothy Parker (in a review of a book by Margot Asquith.)

Like all self-made men he worships his creator

Unknown

Egotist: A person more interested in himself than in me.

Ambrose Bierce

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are

Gore Vidal

Don’t be humble. You’re not that great

Golda Meir

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.

Sam Levenson

A vegetarian is a person who won’t eat anything that can have children

David Brenner

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Aristotle

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy

Sam Levenson

Sex drive; a physical craving that begins in adolescence and ends at marriage..

Robert Byrne

Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing was happening, so I said to her “ What’s the matter, you can’t think of anybody either ?”

Rodney Dangerfield

The only really indecent people are the chaste

J. K. Huysmans

I hate women because they always know where things are

James Thurber

The heaviest object in the world is the body of the women you have ceased to love

Marquis de Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

Oscar Wilde

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all

Samuel Butler.

Marriage is not a word but a sentence

Unknown

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal

Woody Allen

What scares me about divorce is that my children might put me in a home for unwed mothers

Teressa Skelton.

It is better to be a coward for a minute than be dead for the rest of your life

Irish proverb.

Nobody has bet enough on a winning horse

Overheard at a track by Richard Sasuly

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it

Cicero

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

George Bernard Shaw

A piano is a piano is a piano–Gertrude Steinway

Unknown

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

Russell Lynes

Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle and an end

Peter de Vries

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today

Herman Wouk

Any ordinary man can…surround himself with two thousand books…and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy

Augustine Birrell.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.

Roy Blount jun.

‘Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.

W. C. Fields

I drink to make other people more interesting

George Jean Nathan.

I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy

Unknown

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson

To be continued.

R. M. Healey

More extracts from Bon Viveur (1955)

Sheekey’s

‘Fanny ‘ and Johnnie Cradock evidently enjoyed seafood and were fussy about how it was cooked and served. They particularly hated oyster stew that had been ‘stewed indefinitely’. Here is their entry on the fish restaurant Sheekey’s, which is still there in St Martin’s Court, Covent Garden, seventy years on, though operating on a much larger scale as J. Sheekey .

Nell is still there, still opening oysters superbly and still warming us with her bright smile and flashing cockney humour.

This restaurant could scarcely be plainer. It is a small scrubbed temple dedicated to fresh fish, so pray do not hold us culpable if you accept our recommendation: ask for two lamb cutlets, a salad and some spinach and then moan, ‘ but dahling, I loathe fish’. Stay away, if you cannot enjoy a wedge of fresh turbot (5s.), pink, wet crab and lobster salads (7s), Scotch salmon in season (8s 6d), oyster stew which is not stewed indefinitely ! a heinous offence! And a dozen oysters, which in season are the pick of the Whitstable and Ham Oyster Beds daily dredge.

Rejoice, too, that you can purchase those sound fishy partners, Hock and Chablis by the glass for 4s., or fly higher if you prefer with one of several varieties of sound, dry champagne. Additionally, after the oysters, Frances dotes upon the big jugs of crisp celery, the tin brown bread and butter, the Stilton, or Wensleydale, and the good black coffee thereafter. A perfect meal for under a pound—without wines—and one of the most nourishing and sustaining that we know.

Proprietors: Mr and Mrs Williams

Questions remain regarding the history of Sheekey’s. The restaurant’s website is good on marketing the place, but not so informative on its history. Considering the restaurant is so proud of its long history, one might expect considerable detail on how it reached its present reputation. Instead all we get are a few words on its humble origins as a roadside seafood stall. One would like to know, for instance, who the fabled ‘Nell ‘was, or who were Mr and Mrs Williams, the owners in 1955. Presumably, like many other restaurants of note, this couple liked to conjure up a feeling of nostalgia for the ‘good old times ‘by retaining the name of the first owner. But was it necessary to change the perfectly acceptable Sheekey’s to J. Sheekey?

Anyway, things have changed a lot since the Cradock’s visited the place. Long gone, not surprisingly, is the ‘perfect meal for under a pound ‘. Today it is reckoned that diners would get little change from £100 for an a la carte meal. As for the set lunch (Sun – Friday, 12 – 4.45 pm), two very modest courses ( no oysters here) would set you back £33. As for oysters, the cheapest come at six for £27 and the most expensive ( Loch Ryan ) at six for £39. Back in 1955 you were offered ‘ the pick of the Whitstable and Ham Oyster Beds. But there is no mention of these famous beds in today’s menu.

The mains fish dishes are frankly expensive (‘overpriced for what you get’, as one displeased diner put it on Trip Advisor ). Compare the 1955 turbot at 5s. with the 2024 roasted fillet of cod at £36, or the 1955 ‘ Scotch salmon ‘ at 8s 6d with the 2024 miso salmon at £34. But that’s inflation I suppose! Nor are vegetables included in the price. Diners have to pay extra for these, and celery is not included.

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Beatnik poetry parody by AI 1962 and 2024

I asked ChatGPT to come up with a parody of a Beatnik poem,

within seconds this appeared, daddy-o (daddy – AI -o!) :

Jazz snaps, bongo thumps,

man, l’m real gone

like milk, like fog,

cat’s got whiskers, but who’s got time?

Reality’s a broken jukebox,

spinnin’ static and cigarette smoke,

dig it, daddy-o — the universe yawns

A good effort. I dig it. However in the book Science Shapes Tomorrow (1962) they asked a computer

(probably the size of a house) to write a Beatnik poem, having fed it 500 words

usually used by Beatnik poets’ and it came up with this:

Auto beatnik poem number 41: insects.

All children are small and crusty.

And I can saw all dragons.

And all pale, blind, humble Waters are cleaning,

And flying woefully is like closing sweetly,\

A insect, dumb and torpid, comes off the daddyo,

How is a insect into this fur?

The 2024 is probably better as a parody, AI by its mimetic nature being adept at parody – but the one from 62 years ago is a fine effort.

At that time what has now become Artificial Intelligence was called ‘Machine Thinking.’ In the book they say that a thinking machine must be able to learn by experience, to be flexible in the way it takes in its information. The machine ‘will have to come far closer to our almost miraculous five senses which feed our brains with information. Great steps are being made in this direction… The third ability is the machine must be able to break free from logic, produce for themselves new and original ways of working with the data inside them.’ The fourth is interesting – the machine must be able to recognise when it is being brilliant – ‘it would be sad if a machine hit by chance, for example, on a successor to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and then did not recognize that this was a more valuable statement than printing out that the Earth is round.’ This is quite a demand – even now, surely, it is the human who recognizes when the machine is being brilliant. This could change..

Contradictory quotations—for versus against ( arranged alphabetically)

[Above Martha Graham and Charles Baudelaire]

ACTORS AND ACTING

For

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse

Marlon Brando

Against

The better the actor the more stupid he is

Truman Capote

I am not paid to think

Clark Gable

AMERICA

For

A thousand years hence, perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now…the noblest work of human wisdom, the grand scene of human glory.

Thomas Paine

Against

The organisation of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass- media notoriously phony.

Paul Goodman, The Community of Scholars |(1962)

The difference between Los Angeles and yoghurt is that yoghurt has real culture

Tom Taussik, Legless in Gaza ( 1982).

The worse country to be poor in is America.

Arnold Toynbee

ANIMALS

For

It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats

Baudelaire, Mon coeur mis a nu (1887)

People with insufficient personalities are fond of cats. These people adore being ignored.

Henry Morgan

Against

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.

August Strindberg, A Madman’s Diary.

ARCHITECTURE

For

Less is more

Mies van de Rohe

Against

Less is only more when more is no good

Frank Lloyd Wright, The Future of Architecture ( 1953)

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Charles Knight on book statistics, 1471 – 1827

Taken from the Appendix to his Shadows of the Old Booksellers (1927 reprint of book originally published in 1865)

The first period of the English Press, 1471 – 1603

In 1540 ( Grafton) printed only 500 copies of his complete edition of the Scriptures,

‘ and yet so great was the rush to this new supply of the most important knowledge, that we have existing 326 editions of the English Bible, or parts of the Bible, printed between 1526 and 1600 ‘ .

‘The early English printers did not attempt what the continental ones were doing for the ancient classics. Down to 1540 no Greek book had appeared from an English press. ‘ Oxford had printed only a part of Cicero’s Epistles; Cambridge, no ancient writer whatever:-only three or four old Roman writers had been reprinted, at that period, throughout England.

Ames and Herbert have recorded the names of 350 printers operating during 1471 – 1600 in England and Scotland, including foreign printers producing books for England. During this same period 10,000 titles appeared, though some were only single sheets…’

‘The Privy Purse Accounts of Elizabeth of York’, published by Sir H. Nicolas records that in 1505 twenty pence were paid for a Primer and a Psalter. In 1505 twenty pence would have bought half a load of barley, and were equal to six days’ work of a labourer. In 1516, Fitzherbert’s Abridgement, a large folio law book, then first published, was sold for forty shillings. At that time forty shillings would have bought three fat oxen…’

The second period of the English Press, 1603 – 1688

‘…perhaps all circumstances considered, the least favourable to the diffusion of knowledge of any period in our whole literary history… Controversy… began to be rife in England; and the spirit at least exploded in such a torrent of civil and ecclesiastical violence in the reign of James’ successor, as left the many little leisure for the cultivation of their understandings. The press was absorbed by the productions of this furious spirit. There is in the British Museum, a collection of 2,000 volumes of Tracts issued between the years 1640 and 1660…

‘This most curious collection was made by a bookseller of the name of Tomlinson, in the times when the tracts were printed; it was bargained for, but not bought, by Charles II; and was eventually bought by George III, and presented by him to the British Museum.’

‘The number of impressions of new books unconnected with controversial subjects, printed during these stormy days, must have been very small. Dr Johnson has remarked that the nation, from 1623 to 1644 was satisfied with two editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, which, probably together did not amount to a thousand copies.’

‘ At the Restoration our national literature, with a very few grand exceptions, put on the lowest garb in which literature can be arrayed…Under such a state of things, Milton received fifteen pounds for the copy of Paradise Lost; and an Act of Parliament was passed that only twenty printers should practise their art in the kingdom. We see by a petition to Parliament in 1666, that there were only 140 “ working printers “ in London…’

‘…At the fire of London, in 1666, the booksellers dwelling about St Paul’s lost an immense stock of books in quires, amounting, according to Evelyn, to £200,000, which they were accustomed to store in the vaults of the metropolitan cathedral, and of other neighbouring churches…there was considerable activity once more in printing. The laws regulating the number of printers son after fell into disuse, and they had long fallen into contempt. We have before a catalogue ( the first compiled in this country) of “ all the books printed in England since the dreadful fire, 1666 to the end of Trinity Term 1680 “, which catalogue is continued to 1685, year by year. A great many—we may fairly say one half—of these books, are single sermons and tracts. The whole number of books printed during the fourteen years from1666 to 1680, we ascertain, by counting, was 3,550, of which 947 were divinity, 420 law, and 153 physic,—so that two-fifths of the whole were professional books; 397 were school books , and 2653 on subjects of geography and navigation, including maps. Taking the average of these fourteen years, the total numbe4r of works produced yearly was 253; but deducting the reprints, pamphlets, single sermons, and maps, we may fairly assume , that the yearly average of new books was under 100. Of the number of copies constituting an edition we have no record; we apprehend it must have been small, for the price of a book, as far as can ascertain it, was considerable….In a catalogue, with prices, printed twenty-two years after one we have just noticed, we find that the ordinary cost of an octavo was five shillings.

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