Frederick Rolfe, aka Baron Corvo (1860-1913) was a rather obscure figure in modernist literature, but his influence has been discerned in novels written by Henry Harland, Ronald Firbank, Graham Greene, and Alexander Theroux. His biography by A.J.A. Symons, The Quest for Corvo, is regarded as a minor classic in the field. A lengthy and revealing 4 pp. ALS letter to English poet Charles Kains Jackson, which covers a number of subjects, such as photography, Catholicism, and boys, with Rolfe thanking his friend for his "charming letter…one most grateful to me for I am undergoing one of my periodical fits of dumps." He encourages Jackson to send papers relating to photography, and then provides a description of the tombs at Ariccia near Albano, “…you may walk the 11 miles if you like…the straddling is awful. Moreover out of the crevices in the walls where you wedge your elbows dire & dreadful beasts put out horns & claws & hoofs at you like this.” Rolfe has added a pair of bold sketches here: one of a man walking gingerly into the receding tunnel, and the other of horns and claws. On the next page Rolfe adds the peculiar line “Lady Burton is a woman,” before launching into a tirade against Papists, “…I am trying to kick up some awful row about the way papist treat their converts in one of the newspapers…I've sent a letter to the Manchester Guardian.” In Miriam J. Benkovitz's biography of Rolfe, she notes this passage as being Rolfe's first attack on Catholics. He continues on and writes about ongoing paintings, an Arras, St. Edmund, and how “There is a St. Martin coming on & now what I want is a perfectly naked boy floating in mid air perpendicularly, head thrown back & arms up. I'll give him a golden bow & quiver & call him 'Love.'” He proceeds to complain that he hasn't the right bathing places to pose his boy models, and describes them as “ribald & ugly. Pose they couldn't for their lives,” comparing them unfavorably in front of the camera to the models he found in Italy. He mentions that Gleeson White has offered his 13-year-old son Eric as a model, a proposition that causes Rolfe alarm: “I am sure he regards me with a suspicious eye & expects me to give way to genuflections or some other Jesuitry.” He asks for Henry Tuke's address in order to send him some photographs, and closes with a candid statement on his "relations with boys. You know I never make friends of them now, I am too old & uninteresting. But I make them my bondslaves & worship their beauty.” In very good to fine condition, with ink erosion-related loss to the bottom of the drawing on the first page. More

NP (1924). Second edition, expanded and with a new Foreword by the author. One of 2000 numbered copies printed of this collection of gay stories by the important gay activist, who was prosecuted for many of these stories when they originally appeared some years earlier. A very nice copy in terra cotta colored linen boards. More

Organisation Commune des Régions Sahariennes (ND). 27pp. 4to. One of the first attempts to publish in Berber alphabet on characters engraved by the National Printing Office. Blue cardboard cover closed by a red cord, 30 drawings including 6 full-page and color, excluding text. Light wear to covers. This appears to be a reproduction of the first (1958) edition, the numbering and the text "Imprimerie Nationale de France" are missing on the back. More

Paris: Librairie Generale Catholique (1922). 287pp. A fictionalized version of the events leading up the the eruption of Mt. Pele in 1902, which resulted in the death of 30,000 people around St. Pierre, the capitol. St. Pierre has been described as the Sodom of the Caribbean, a town rife with prostitution, decadence, blasphemy, homosexuality and unbelief and many believed this was the reason for the eruption. The author portrays assorted sacrileges and "decadent behavior" that occurred immediately before the eruption. Very good in original wrappers, light wear to covers and spine, pages uncut. Quite rare. More

Paris: Louis Querelle (1932). The gay author's second novel, issued the same year as his murder by an unknown lover on the rue de Rome in Paris. Patrick Modiano surmises that Scouffi's actual name may have been Badrawi, a Greek from Alexandria. Very good in original wrappers. More

Privately Printed [1933]. The ninth of the eccentric author's book productions and the first under this pseudonym. The work, a Surrealist text set around a Venutian circus, is illustrated with more than one hundred accomplished drawings by Edward Carrick. Very good in 3/4 leather boards and marbled boards, browned at edges. More

Toulouse (1948). A small compendium of information on sexuality, with explanations of frigidity, homosexuality. Very good in wrappers. More

London: Duckworth (1928). 4to. 131pp. 1st Edition. Hardcover. A survey of London statues, illustrated throughout with Hamnett's delightful interpretations. Included are images of Shakespeare, Achilles, The Fat Boy (at Pie Corner) and various others. A very good copy in lightly worn boards, light spotting to foredege, very good illustrated jacked, lightly worn and marked with small abrasions. Inscribed by Sitwell to John Arlott. Laid into the book are 2 entertaining letters (6pp.) by Sitwell to another friend (one dated 1933) referencing Adrian Stokes, Herbert Read, his troubled relationship with his father, his brother Sacheverell and assorted other affairs. With envelopes, appearing to date from the 1930s. More

New York (1924). 83pp. The first, and extremely uncommon, anthology of homosexual literature to be published in America. The author, a professional chemist and graduate of Columbia University, compiled the anthology anonymously and remains somewhat of a mystery today. His identity has been revealed by the research of several scholars (notably Timothy d'Arch Smith and Donald Mader) and the story of the anthology has been discussed in the only reprint of the edition (Coltsfoot Press, 1978). The anthology commences with works from ancient Hebrew literature and progresses throught the poetry of the 1920s. Included are a selection of known Uranian poets, such as Digby Mackworth Dolben, Edward Cracroft Lefroy, Edward Emmanuel Bradford, John Gambril Nicholson, John Moray Stuart-Young, Edmund John, "Philebus" (John Leslie Barford) and John Addington Symonds. But there are also some surprising contributions from more traditional poets, such as Ernest Myers, William Alexander Percy, James Fennimore Cooper, Jr., Victor Starbuck, Katherine Mansfield, Willard Wattles as well as the anthologist himself. Described by Timothy d'Arch Smith as a "startingly thorough and well-informed anthology" it remains a classic in the field of gay literature and a cornerstone of collecting in the field. According to a prospectus issued by the anthologist, the book was issued in an edition of 150 copies, but relatively few are known to exist. Copy of Samuel Cottam, another Uranian poet with his penned and penciled notations throughout. Front endpaper has remains of a removed photograph or bookplate. Very good in original Italian paper boards, light bumping to corners, spine label missing, ttile page excised. See Rosenthal, An Arcadian Photographer in Manhattan for a thorough examination of Slocum's work. More

Asphodel Editions (2004). Hardcover. This is the revised edition of the author's 1983 bibliography of the Fortune Press. This edition includes a wealth of new material, including the identity of some of the psuedonymous authors, as well as indexes missing from the original edition. Binding is 8vo, Cloth. (vi), 115 +1 pages. More

London: Chatto & Windus (1889). The first published collection of Uranian poetry, according to the scholar Timothy d'Arch Smith in his definitive treatise on the subject, Love in Earnest (pp.24-27). The book was issued while the author lived in exile in France after a scandal involving a seventeen year old boy with whom he had become besotted had forced him to leave England, leaving a scandal in his wake. The poems in this volume deal directly with this ill-fated love affair and were reviewed by Oscar Wilde in the Pall Mall Gazette in the year of publication (‘He has nothing to say and says it’.) Some have argued that the aristocrat who perverts Dorian Gray in Wilde's novel (Lord Henry) was in fact modeled after Somerset. Very good in original parchment boards, light cover wear, spine gutters cracking a bit, spine a bit dulled. More

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