Photograph from Winged Squadrons by Cecil Beaton (1942).
“Here is something entirely new and dynamic, and yet still almost as mysterious and inexplicable as death itself. Never before have battles been fought six miles above the surface of the earth at a speed of over three hundred miles an hour… A new mould of men has been cast. The feats of their bravery haunt of, they baffle us, and satisfy completely the spirit of romantic daring inherent in our island race. Perhaps this British aptitude for flying is part of the sailing tradition and the feeling for freedom and adventure that is a heritage from Drake. Maybe there is a natural sequence from sea to air, and the Englishman who enjoyed drifting along with the breezes in his boat at four knots an hour is the father of the boy who now wishes to beat the winds in his Hurricane” – Cecil Beaton, preface to Winged Squadrons (1942).
Before the Second World War, Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) had been a glamorous society photographer, responsible for some of the most striking portraits of the 1920s and 30s. At the outbreak of hostilities he turned his considerable talent to the service of the Allied cause and became one of the most influential photographers of the war, with his lens largely shaping public perception of the conflict. His portraits of Winston Churchill and the Queen boosted morale at home, and a photo of a child injured during the Blitz “was said to have influenced American feeling concerning the war more than any other picture” (ODNB) when it appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1940. Even more importantly, he traveled around the world photographing and interviewing fighting men and women, and “By his courage and dedicated approach he earned the respect of the three services” (ODNB).
Cecil Beaton self-portrait.
One of the six books that resulted from Beaton’s war photography was Winged Squadrons, for which he visited two dozen air bases, recording the lives of RAF men in photos and moving prose. We recently acquired a unique item – Beaton’s working maquette (SOLD) for this book:
Maquette for Winged Squadrons by Cecil Beaton.
A maquette is a bit like a draft, or model, of a book used during the editing and design process, and can tell us a great deal about the circumstances of a book’s production. This one includes the entire text in draft form, with numerous annotations in ink by Beaton himself:
Beaton’s handwritten corrections to the typescript of Winged Squadrons.
Corrections made during editing reveal Beaton’s thought processes, and how his ideas about the content and structure of the book changed as he worked. Passages that have been deleted in blue and red pencil by the official censor demonstrate just how closely the author worked with the airmen, with details such as the following in brackets being cut, “So that they shall not be located by their radio, the bombers seldom break wireless silence on the outward journey, ”. In another example below, sensitive information about foreign targets is excised:
Twelve photographs are included with the maquette, and all are stamped and numbered in ink on the verso by Beaton’s studio, along with pencil and ink notes related to their use in the book. All the photographs were also stamped as “approved” by the Press & Censorship Bureau during September 1941 and January 1942. Each appears in the final book, and it is possible to compare the full-sized photos of the maquette with the cropped images in the final version–in one case a photo has been altered to hide pin-ups on the wall of an airman’s bunk. Below, the original photo before cropping:
A portion of another photograph has been whited out, possibly for security reasons, a correction just visible in the printed version:
Below, more of the original photographs included with the maquette:
Airmen with messenger pigeons used for delivering sensitive information.
The maquette is held loosely between two boards, the cover with a handwritten title. This can be seen in the image below, together with a first edition of the final book and the folding case that they are housed in:
For more on Cecil Beaton:
The Imperial War Museum is hosting a major new exhibition, Cecil Beaton – Theatre of War, which will include 250 of Beaton’s wartime photographs as well as films, drawings, and diaries. There is a preview at Londonist and The Guardian has a slideshow of images from the exhibition.
First edition of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, in the original dust jacket (1914). – SOLD
Touring Britain this summer is the Townsend Productions theatre adaptation of Robert Tressell’s* socialist novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. A semi-autobiographical account of the plight of the working class, the story follows a group of construction workers and the single employee who tries to “arouse his workmates to the evils of the system which exploits them… Sardonic and satirical in tone, the novel’s great strength is its minute and convincing observation of the hero’s workmates, whose ‘philanthropy’ consists of letting employers reap the surplus value their labour produces” (ODNB).
The author, real name Robert Philippe Noonan (1870–1911), was the illegitimate son of an inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary. He settled in South Africa for ten years, where he helped found the Irish Brigade, which fought against Britain in the Anglo-Boer War. However, he left Africa in 1899 before hostilities broke out and settled in Hastings. “Working in the building trade at subsistence wages, he contracted tuberculosis, was influenced by socialist writers such as Robert Blatchford, and became an active member of the unusually large Hastings branch of the Social Democratic Federation, whose banner he painted. He spent his spare time during the last ten years of his life writing by hand the 1800-page manuscript of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which brought posthumous fame” (ODNB). He died in the Royal Infirmary in Liverpool; having previously set out to start a new life in Canada he got no further, was taken seriously ill, spent time in the workhouse, and “was buried in a pauper’s grave in the city’s Walton Park cemetery.” Kathleen, his orphaned daughter, sold the manuscript for £25 to the publisher Grant Richards, who described it as, this “damnably subversive, but … extraordinarily real” novel. Alan Sillitoe subsequently called it “The first great English novel about the class war”, and Michael Foot praised its “truly Swiftian impact”. What is certain is the authenticity of its voice which offers “a unique view of early twentieth-century working-class life through the eyes of an articulate proletarian.”
Popular since its first appearance, The Ragged Trousered-Philanthropists was reprinted numerous times and sold more than 100,000 copies by 1940. First editions such as this one are rare, particularly in the dust jacket, as the novel was produced in one of its publisher’s characteristically small print runs. Another interesting point about the book is that it was the only one advertised on the rear panel of the dust jacket to James Joyce’s Dubliners, with the ad printed in an unusual block format:
Ad for The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists on the dust jacket of James Joyce’s Dubliners.
*Although the title page of the manuscript is clearly signed Tressell (which was how Noonan wrote the word for a painter’s trestle in his manuscript), for some unknown reason the author’s name was printed as Tressall in this first edition and in the Grant Richards abridged cheap edition of 1918.
Boxing champion Ted “Kid” Lewis and his manager, Alec “Zalig” Goodman.
Today’s post is by staff member Glenn Mitchell, who specialises in military and travel, music (particularly jazz), archaeology, and boxing.
We recently acquired a remarkable cache of images, most apparently unique, covering the key period in the career of the British boxing champion Ted “Kid” Lewis. Described by Mike Tyson as “probably the greatest fighter to ever come out of Britain,” he held a world record nine titles at three different weights, and was the first competitor to be elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame. The photographs show his training camps, entourage, and fellow pugilists during his time in America, when he was transformed from the young star of London’s Jewish East End into one of the most respected and heroic figures of the heroic era of the sport; “The Smashing, Dashing, Crashing Kid”. This collection of 32 original photographs seems to have originated with Lewis’s Svengali-like manager Alec “Zalig” Goodman, whose services as what would now be called Lewis’s “nutritionist” allowed the shape-shifting that enabled him to compile his phenomenal multi-division record.
Ted Kid Lewis with sparring partner, manager, and others.
Lewis was born Gershon Mendeloff in 1893, the son of Russian emigrants, and he began his boxing career at the Judaean Athletic Club in London’s East End at age 14. He turned professional in 1909, in 1913 won the British Featherweight Championship with a seventeenth round stoppage of Alec Lambert, and won the the European Championship in 1914.
The period covered by these photographs, 1914 to 1917, is one in which Lewis traveled widely in search of the big cash fights. A tour of Australia yielded 5 fights in 63 days, and a couple of victories over significant opposition. Then, on the look-out for new opportunities, rather then returning home Lewis and Goodman headed off to America, the decision apparently made on the toss of a coin. “TK was later to wonder whether the coin that had been used was a double-tailed one” (Lewis, Ted Kid Lewis: His Life and Times, p57). Here, in August 1915 at the Boston Armory, Lewis defeated Jack Britton, the Boxing Marvel, to win the World Welterweight title. Britton and Lewis were to fight another 19 times over the next 6 years, one of the great rivalries of boxing history.
Lewis (left) and Goodman (right) having fun between bouts in Australia.
Encouraged by the British Embassy to remain in America as propaganda for the British cause in the First World War, Lewis brought his family over to join him in 1916, and in 1917, when America joined the Allies, he signed up and became a boxing instructor with the US Army. The war over, and his title lost to Britton, Lewis returned to England in 1920. He quickly acquired the Middleweight Championship, and the British, British Empire and European Welterweight titles, but his relentless schedule – he fought over 250 times in 12 years – was beginning to take its toll. In ’21 he failed to regain his title from Britton at Madison Square Garden, and in ’22 he was beaten by Georges Carpentier in an attempt on the World Light-Heavyweight title. He continued to fight until 1929, but never quite recaptured the greatness that he achieved during the war years. In his 100 Greatest Boxers of All Time the late great Bert Sugar rated Lewis as 33rd, putting him ahead of Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Georges Carpentier.
This collection includes many fascinating, and perhaps unique, images drawn from Lewis’s time at training camp in America, one showing him in an extravagant spotted robe with tasselled cord – “Boxing was passing through a fashionable, glamorous phase, Carpentier being the inspiration” (Lewis, p41):
Ted Kid Lewis in an elaborate robe.
Others in typical pugilistic pose:
Ted Kid Lewis
Relaxing on the beach at Staten Island:
Ted Kid Lewis at Staten Island.
At the wheel of a Model T full of passengers at Westchester:
Ted Kid Lewis at the wheel of a Model T.
Posing with his wife Elsie (center), an American model he met in 1915 when she was his arranged date at the Gala opening of the London Social Club in NY:
Ted Kid Lewis and his wife Elsie (center), and Alec Goodman and unknown (left).
There are also a number of pictures of other fighters, many signed or inscribed to Goodman; Jack Greenstock of Bethnal Green, who fought Lewis a number of times in his early days at Judaeans AC:
Jack Greenstock, “with best wishes to my best pal Alec Goodman”.
Al Reich, a New York fighter who in his time took on such notables as “Fireman” Jim Flynn, “Gunboat” Smith, and Battling Levinsky:
Al Reich, “to my good friend Alec Goodman”.
A very dapper Harry Mason, a Bethnal Green fighter who based himself in Leeds and played the violin and recited poetry before bouts, much to his opponents’ discomfort:
Harry Mason, “to my traner Alec Goodman”.
Harry Weston and Jack Moy face off at the “first annual field day and open air athletic meet by the Judaean S.A.P.”:
Harry Weston and Jack Moy at the first annual field day and open air athletic meet by the Judaean S.A.P.
An inscribed card from Andre Anderson, who knocked down Jack Dempsey in his first New York fight, and was later shot for his failure to keep his promise to fix a fight:
Andre Anderson, “to my friend and pal A. Goodman”.
Below, Lewis in England with a sparring partner, the photo captioned by Goodman, “Featherweight Champion of England”:
Ted Kid Lewis “Featherweight Champion of England” with sparring partner.
A highly evocative visual document of one of Britain’s few true greats, as “Iron” Mike said – and we would not wish to argue – “you rate a fighter by longevity, and for years Ted Lewis beat the greatest American fighters for years … it’s unbelievable the guys he had to fight! The Who’s Who of Boxing, the greatest of the great, and yet he still prevailed as number one.”
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One of the most common misconceptions about books is that misprints and typos make them rare or valuable. Unfortunately, while certain types of errors can contribute to a book’s collectability, these alone will not increase the value of an otherwise inexpensive misprinted books. Consider the following case:
The Sun Also Rises is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Widely considered to be Ernest Hemingway’s best book, it is also the founding text of the “Lost Generation” of writers who came of age during the First World War. This significance, combined with the small number of first editions available today (5,090 copies were printed and few have survived in collectible condition) is what makes it valuable.
First edition of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926). BOOK SOLD
So where do misprints and typos come in? In this case, an error on page 181 (“stoppped” instead of “stopped”) appears in only the earliest issue of the book and was quickly corrected by the printer. When accompanied by other signs, such as the correct date, publisher, and binding, it means that these misprinted books were one of the very first to be printed, making it more desirable to collectors.
On the other hand, any inexpensive reprint of the same book might contain a misprint. But if the edition is not particularly interesting or uncommon, and the order in which the book was published is not important, then the misprint is just a nuisance. It isn’t the typo alone that makes a book valuable, it’s what the typo indicates: how early a specific copy was published and how rare it is.
For a small number of very important books such as The Sun Also Rises, misprints can have an impact on value, but in most cases they don’t make a difference. To find out more about first editions, see our posts:
In 1848 the publishing firm Smith, Elder & Co. wrote to Charlotte Brontë to request that she personally illustrate the second edition of Jane Eyre. The author’s modest response will be familiar to anyone who has in later life revisited the artistic output of their childhood and teenage years,
“I have, in my day, wasted a certain quantity of Bristol board and drawing-paper, crayons and cakes of colour, but when I examine the contents of my portfolio now, it seems as if during the years it has been lying closed some fairy has changed what I once thought sterling coin into dry leaves, and I feel much inclined to consign the whole collection of drawings to the fire” (Alexander and Sellars p. 36).
Luckily, this did not happen. Today 180 original drawings can be attributed to Charlotte, and we have had the privilege obtain two of these for a client. What can they tell us about her life and the inspiration for her novels?
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë were introduced to art in the same way as thousands of other middle-class Victorian women, through the copying of prints. These had been a popular art form since the late Middle Ages, but it was not until the early nineteenth-century that technological innovations made them available on a truly wide scale. Even the poorer members of society might have one or two decorating their homes, and gift books full of romantic portraits, dramatic landscapes, and Biblical and literary scenes proliferated. This interest in the picturesque dovetailed with a new emphasis on providing middle-class women with “accomplishments”, so that drawing joined embroidery and music as a requirement for girls of the aspiring classes. Women were not expected to become creative artists, but to produce artwork as a constructive use of leisure time – to ornament their homes and to create gifts and portraits of family members. Because of this limited scope girls were not usually encouraged to draw from life as their brothers did, but to learn by copying the now ubiquitous commercial prints until they could reproduce them exactly.
The Brontë children were eager artists and authors from a young age, and the girls received exactly this type of training, both at home and at boarding school. A good example is below, an original pencil drawing by Charlotte Brontë from Thomas Allom’s engraving of Derwent Water in the Lake District. Allom published a number of volumes of landscape engravings during the 1830s, and Charlotte is known to have made other drawings based on his work. This one has long been known to Brontë scholars but was unaccounted for during the twentieth century, and was only verified as depicting Derwent Water when it resurfaced at auction this year (click to enlarge).
Original pencil drawing by Charlotte Brontë of Derwent Water in the Lake District, dated 1832 and based on an engraving by Thomas Allom.
Charlotte was ambitious, “as a girl of twelve she was keen to cultivate a discerning mind and refine her taste in art: ‘She picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc., as if it were gold’ (Wise and Symington, 1.92)” (ODNB). She also chafed against the restrictions imposed upon her, living with “a constant sense of unfulfilled desire and ambition” (ODNB). For Charlotte art was not just an “accomplishment”, but a potential career and a way to avoid the only futures available to unmarried women of her standing–teacher or governess. Hoping to work as a professional miniature painter, she diligently copied prints until she became an accomplished amateur, even exhibiting two drawings at Leeds in 1834. But she rarely drew from life or from her own imagination, and gradually realised that she would never overcome the restrictions of this form of artistic education. Instead, she focused on writing, and she and her sisters published their first book, Poems, in 1846 under the male pen names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. In the following year Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey all appeared.
It may seem that the Brontës’ careful copies of prints by other artists have little to do with their genius as authors, but this is far from the case. As Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars point out in The Art of the Brontës, “The visual image sustained and nurtured the early lives of the Brontës”, enabling them to “visualise other worlds… to transpose the subjects and languages of pictures into their literary work. For all the Brontës, a knowledge of the visual arts, the habit of reading pictures, and the practice of drawing and painting, were crucial to their development as writers” (Alexander & Sellars p. 9).
During the nineteenth century, prints were the primary way that most people accessed images of fine art, contemporary events, and important places, and the young Brontës were no exception. Much of the visual and verbal imagery in their juvenalia was sourced directly from literary prints or illustrated books, particularly those of authors such as Scott, Burns, Shakespeare, and Milton. Natural history engravings and rural scenes by Thomas Bewick, and the dramatic Old Testament panoramas of John Martin, contributed to the siblings’ fertile imaginations, and Byron was a profound influence on all four children. During the early 1830s Charlotte copied portraits of Byron himself, as well as sublime landscapes and Byronic heroines who directly influenced the characters in her own fiction. Below, a drawing by Brontë of an unidentified woman whom scholars originally identified as Anne Brontë, but which was most likely copied from an engraving.
Pencil drawing by Charlotte Brontë of an unnamed woman, probably copied from an engraving. This piece was previously identified as Anne Brontë and was used as the frontispiece for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the Thornton edition of the sisters’ collected works published in 1907, but this identification is questionable.
Brontë’s focus on prints also affected her writing is less obvious ways, in her “close observation of detail in character and scene, her sensitivity to colour revealed in description and imagery, her fondness for the vignette, her method of analysing a scene as if it were a painting, and her tendency to structure a novel as if it were a portfolio of paintings” (Alexander & Sellars p. 56). A contemporary critic praised Jane Eyre because, “The pictures stand out before you: they are pictures, and not mere bits of ‘fine writing’. The writer is evidently painting by words a picture that she has in her mind, not ‘making up’ from vague remembrances, and with the consecrated phrases of ‘poetical prose'” (Alexander & Sellars p. 56).
Most tellingly, Brontë incorporated her own experiences into her novels. The heroine of Villette criticises her own “curiously finical Chinese fac-similes of steel or mezzotint plates”, and Jane Eyre begins her education by copying prints, but realises the naiveté of her early efforts and eventually becomes what Charlotte was unable to be – a creative artist working from life rather than static engravings.
For more information on this topic the best guide is The Art of the Brontës by Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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