| Bodleian Library, Oxford: | 27515.e.350 |
| Bodleian Library, Oxford: | 27515.e.350 |
| Cambridge University Library: | 864.a.322(24) |
[1]3r, p.[1]
STENDHAL BY ANATOLE FRANCE Translated by J. LEWIS MAY [floral design] LONDON 1926
[1]3v, p.[2]
(110)
[1]16.
[4, 1-2] 3-23 [24,+4].
p.[2]
Anatole France's essay on Stendhal originally appeared in the 'Revue de Paris'; the English translation by J. Lewis May was published in 'To-day', December 1921.
[1]14v, p.[24]
A List of First Editions Privately Printed for Holbrook Jackson [centered list of titles by Ralph Hodgson, Gordon Bottomley, Edmund Blunden, Richard Aldington Fzb, and Cecil Roberts, each a run of 50 copies only].
Crown 8o: trimmed 7¼"×4⅝", white wove Italian, no mark; 14pt. Garamond with ligatures; the outermost leaf front and back is tucked inside (but not fixed to) turn-ins of the medium brown laid paper wrappers, cut slightly larger than the page size, hence the 4 blank pages.
Stendhal was a pseudonym of Marie Henri Beyle.
Anatole France was the pseudonym of François-Anatole Thibault.
Oliver Sinon's Catalogue raisonné states this edition of 110 copies was privately printed for Holbrook Jackson (See Kzc and reprint Simon 1973 p.243).
The person responsible for publishing this pamphlet was Holbrook Jackson, a bibliophile and publisher. He may have seen Anatole France's essay in the Revue de Paris where its édition originale appeared in vol.5 1920, details omitted from his note on p.[2]. (This French term is narrower than 'first edition' in English — see Carter 1961 p.93-4). Nowhere does Jackson call this 1926 pamphlet a 'first edition'.
In 1917 Jackson had became proprietor of To-day, and it may be that he suggested to J. L. May translating the essay. Certainly he was able to get this English version published, on Sat 25th September 1926. Anatole France had died only two years earlier (12/Oct/1924) so his name was current in the news.
Publishers earn their bread not by being scholars or gentlemen but by promoting their wares, and Jackson, perhaps a Frank Warren of Bloomsbury, does just this on p.[24]. One suspects that he followed the 'chronological obsession' (Carter 1961 p.58), and that this list of 'first editions', all short runs, invites us to describe his pamphlet in that way.
We might correctly describe it as 'the first edition published separately in England'. To call it the 'First English edition' would introduce confusion between language-names and country names, as 'English' may indicate either the language (shared with U.S.A. and many countries) or England as a geographical area. Jackson deftly avoids these epithets! Later, in 1934, Carter & Pollard exposed T. J. Wise as a forger of 'pre-first' editions, thereby restoring sanity and caution to the study of such books, and specially their market,
Not in Curwen Library, 1963 handlist, or B.L.
Bodleian copy is numbered 58.
Robin Phillips, 2021, revised 16/Mar/2023
