The most interesting donation we've had in our charity bookshop for
a while; a small calf-bound volume of poems by J.G. Nicholson, gold
blocked on the cover "A Chaplet of Southernwood or A Garden of
Ladslore" (sic, should be "Ladslove"). Another item in the same bag
was the sexual inversion volume of Havelock Ellis's "Studies in the
Psychology of Sex" so there wasn't much doubt about where the owner
was coming from.

The preface is dated 1896. But from what I can see on the web, "A
Garden of Ladslove" was published in 1911, and there is no trace of
a two-in-one edition. It's very well bound in excellent paper so
it could easily be 100 years old.

The charity would have a canary if they knew what I'm trying to sell
here (and no I will *not* accept email offers from readers of this
posting) but it should fetch a pretty good price for them from the,
er, "discerning" buyer, and any such buyer is going to keep their
trap shut about it. If I could figure out what the market rate for
such a thing is.

For a publication which has not a single obscene word or indecent
sentence, its effect is quite mindblowingly creepy. According to
the preface, many of the poems were first published in mainstream
literary and domestic magazines; the author's intention only comes
across when you see them all together. Urgh.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557