HOMOSEXUALITY

[Laurence Housman, writer, artist and radical activist, brother of the poet A. E. Housman.] Typed Card Signed to Rev. A. H. Sayers of the Monmouth Town League of Nations Union, confirming that a car should be sent to collect him.

Author: 
Laurence Housman (1865-1959), writer, artist and radical activist, brother of the poet A. E. Housman and illustrator Clemence Housman [Rev. A. H. Sayers of the Monmouth Town League of Nations Union]
Housman
Publication details: 
9 November 1936; Longmeadow, Street, Somerset.
£45.00
Housman

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The postcard, with stamp printed on it, has the typed address: ‘The Rev. A. H. Sayers, / Orchard Close, / Monmouth’. Aged and worn, with a dog-eared corner and minor rust spotting from a paperclip. Stylised signature. Reads: ‘Many thanks for your offer to send a car to meet me at Severn Tunnel Junction, on November 20th. I will look out for it. / Yours / L Housman’. From the Sayers papers, with other material indicating that Housman was giving a talk for the Union. See image.

[Noel Coward’s father Arthur Sabin Coward.] Two Autograph Letters Signed (both ‘Arthur S. Coward’), respnding to a request from Sewell Stokes that he write ‘a special article about Noëls early days’.

Author: 
Arthur Sabin Coward (1856-1937), father of Noel Coward [Sir Noël Peirce Coward] (1899-1973), playwright and composer [Sewell Stokes (1902-1979), author and broadcaster]
Publication details: 
18 January and 20 February 1929; both from 111 Ebury St S.W.1. [London.]
£120.00

According to Noël Coward’s entry in the Oxford DNB, his family moved through the suburbs of south London, before finally setting in Ebury Street, where his mother Violet ‘acquired a boarding-house on the fringes of Belgravia’. The letters are written on the verge of the huge success of the revue ‘Bitter Sweet’ (1929). The recipient of these letters Sewell Stokes was an author and broadcaster who also worked as a probation officer and prison visitor, writing several works on the British penal system.

[‘I must speak as a full pacifist’: Laurence Housman, writer, artist and radical activist.] Three Typed Letter Signed to Rev. A. H. Sayers regarding a talk he is to give to the Monmouth Town League of Nations Union, and his book ‘The Unexpected Years

Author: 
Laurence Housman (1865-1959), writer, artist and radical activist, brother of the poet A. E. Housman and illustrator Clemence Housman [Rev. A. H. Sayers of the Monmouth Town League of Nations Union]
Publication details: 
3 and 5 November 1936 and 22 February 1937; all three from Longmeadow, Street, Somerset.
£80.00

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. All three letters 1p, 8vo. The third letter in good condition, lightly aged; the first two in fair condition, on creased and chipping cartridge paper, with a few spots of rust from a paperclip. All three folded for postage. All three signed ‘Laurence Housman’. ONE (3 November 1936): Begins: ‘Dear Mr. Sayers, / I am rather perturbed to find that the meeting I am asked to speak at is the Annual of the League of Nations Union. The request for me to speak came from the Peace Pledge Union, and no indication was given that it was not a Peace Pledge meeting.

[ Wolfenden Report; homosexuality] Clipped Signature J.F. Wolfenden.

Author: 
John Frederick Wolfenden, Baron Wolfenden, (1906-1985), educationalist, best remembered for the report, recommending the decriminalisation of homosexuality (1957).
Publication details: 
No place or date.
£32.00

Clipping from Typed Letter signed, 8.5 x 5.5, good condition. Only typed text Yours very truly followed by signature. Docketed in another hand in pencil Headmaster of Uppingham | Author of Report. See image.

[Alfred, Bishop of Melanesia; homosexuality and murder ] [Airmail] Typed Letter Signed "Alfred Melanesia" to the Rev. Father H. Cecil Cohen C.R. at Welsh address, about

Author: 
Alfred Melanesia [ Alfred Thomas Hill (1901–1969), fourth Anglican Bishop of Melanesia].
Publication details: 
Melanesian Mission, Honiara, British Solomon Islands, 17 January 1956.
£250.00

Airmail letter, 27 x 17cm, one and a half pages typed, fold marks, minor staining, mainly good. A long and detailed letter discussing the circumstances of the forthcoming trial of Reginald Poole, revealed as a predatory homosexual, and about to be tried for the murder of a Melanesian youth.

[ Edward Carpenter, poet, socialist and homosexual activist. ] Autograph Letter Signed ('Ed. Carpenter'), praising a portrait, disparaging 'the people', and stating that 'something is being built up, wh. cannot be consumed'.

Author: 
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), poet and author, socialist and homosexual activist, friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and a friend of Walt
Publication details: 
Place not stated. 17 November 1905.
£250.00

2pp., landscape 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. The recipient is not named or addressed, the letter starting abruptly after the date: 'I like your portrait much. Thanks for sending it. Yes, the people are [last word underlined] fools, and the mills of God grind slowly. Nevertheless the work is not lost, and its outcome is sure. It is no good bothering about special results. They must take their own way (generally to the Crematorium!) but all the while something is being built up, wh.

[Sex Education late 1930s; Pamphlet] Programme of Lectures to be held at Conway Hall

Author: 
The Sex Education Society. President Norman Haire.
Publication details: 
"Tuesday January 11th" 1938 [Season October 1937-April 1938]
£120.00

Pamphlet, not paginated [12pp. inc. printed wraps, 8vo], stapled, very good condition. It contains the Programme of Lectures (Transvestism, Sex Education, Changes in Family Life in the USSR, Fetishism, the Birth-Rate), advertisements for related literature, objectives (birth control, V.D. etc.), and objects ("Appliances for Birth Control and Sex Hygiene"), "Aims and Objects of the Sex Education Society" (one page), and Membership form (blank).

Two Autograph Letters Signed (one with a drawing) and an Autograph Note Signed from the editor of 'Ballet' magazine Richard Buckle to Dr Erich Adolph Alport, with typed circular from Buckle and Typed Letter Signed to Alport from his secretary.

Author: 
Richard Buckle [Christopher Richard Sandford Buckle; 'Dicky'] (1916-2001),dance critic and editor of 'Ballet' magazine [Dr Erich Adolph Alport (d.1972), art connoisseur and book collector]
Publication details: 
One from Overstrand [Norfolk]; 27 May 1950. The other four on letterheads of 'Ballet', 'Ballet and Opera' and 'Ballet Publications Ltd'. Between 1949 and 1950.
£120.00

The five items in good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Item One: Autograph Letter Signed (with a crude drawing of Buckle sitting on a rope slung between the printed names of the two magazines). 1p., 4to. On Fleet Street letterhead of 'Ballet Publications Ltd.' Dated by Alport 14 February 1950. The letter concerns an article on the conductor Karl Rankl, and begins: 'Dear Erich | I have just spoken to Harewood [the Earl of Harewood, co-founder with Buckle of 'Opera' magazine].

The flamboyant Labour Member of Parliament Tom Driberg's own collection of photographic portraits of himself; nine large prints, by Maurice Beck (4, signed), Blechman (2, signed), Lenare (2) and Converse Studios (1); and a small one by Alex Dellow.

Author: 
Tom Driberg [Thomas Edward Neil Driberg] (1905-1976), Baron Bradwell, Labour Member of Parliament and the Daily Express's 'William Hickey' ; Maurice Beck; Blechman; Lenare; Converse Studios, New York
Publication details: 
[London and New York.] In stamped photographic album of Lenare, Portraiture, 28, George Street, Hanover Square, London, W.1. None of the ten prints is date [1930s to 1970s].
£500.00

The nine large prints are in good condition, lightly-aged with slight wear to corners. The smaller print is lightly-creased. In worn blue faux-leather album, with large facsimile signature of 'Lenare' on cover in gilt, with the address 'Portraiture | 28, GEORGE STREET | HANOVER SQUARE | LONDON, W.1.' ONE to FOUR. A series of four head-and-shoulders portraits of Driberg, each signed in pencil by Maurice Beck, and with the stamp on the reverse: 'Photograph by | Maurice Beck | F.R.P.S.' Each on a piece of 37 x 29.5 cm.

Black and white portrait by Converse Studios Inc., New York, of the Labour Member of Parliament Tom Driberg [Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, later Baron Bradwell], the 'William Hickey' of the Daily Express.

Author: 
Tom Driberg [Thomas Edward Neil Driberg] (1905-1976), Baron Bradwell, Labour Member of Parliament and the Daily Express's 'William Hickey' [Converse Studios Inc., New York, photographers]
Publication details: 
Converse Studios Inc., New York. [1930s.]
£56.00

Black and white portrait of Driberg from the waist up, by Converse Studios Inc., New York. In good condition, in lightly-worn printed card folder, 35 x 25.5 cm. The image is mounted behind a 23.5 x 18 cm windowpane. Driberg, in his early thirties, in a double-breasted pin-striped suit, white shirt, and tie, faces the camera with hands in pockets. From Driberg's own papers.

[Printed pamphlet, limited to 200 copies.] Memorial Exhibition of Works by Norman Douglas (8th December 1868-9th February 1952).

Author: 
Alan Anderson; Cecil Woolf; Moray McLaren [Norman Douglas]
Memorial Exhibition of Works by Norman Douglas
Publication details: 
'On display during July 1952 at Edinburgh Central Library | George IV Bridge | Edinburgh'. [Printed by McLagan & Cumming, Edinburgh.]
£125.00
Memorial Exhibition of Works by Norman Douglas

'This Bibliographical Catalogue, compiled by Cecil Woolf and Alan Anderson, is limited to two hundred copies.' 8vo, 9 pp. In original green printed wraps. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with single manuscript correction in green ink. Full-page introduction on Douglas by Moray McLaren. Scarce: the only copies on COPAC at Oxford, the British Library, and the National Library of Scotland.

Two Autograph Drafts of reviews and one Autograph Letter Signed to Philip Dossé of Hansom Books, Artillery Mansions, 75 Victoria Street, London SW1.

Author: 
Tom Driberg [Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell of Bradwell-juxta-Mare] (1905-1976) [crossword puzzled]
Publication details: 
Both reviews undated [both c. 1974]. Letter of 14 March 1974; 601 Mountjoy House, Barbican, London, on cancelled House of Commons letterhead.
£100.00

All three items lightly aged but good. Driberg has written 'TOM DRIBERG' at the head of the first page of both reviews. First Review (8vo, 7 pp) with slight wear at head (not affecting text) of first four leaves; last three leaves on House of Commons letterheads. With corrections. The subject is Daphne Fielding's 'The Rainbow Picnic' (1974). Second Review (8vo, 7 pp, on House of Commons letterheads) of four books about crossword puzzles, including Roger Millington's 'The Strange World of the Crossword' (1974). With corrections.

A Catalogue of Letters, Manuscript Papers and Books of Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo).

Author: 
Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe [Baron Corvo] [George Frederick Sims]
Publication details: 
Harrow: George Frederick Sims. [Printed by Purbrook & Eyres Ltd. 20 St. James' Walk, London, E.C.1]
£75.00

Eighteen pages, octavo, with four plates on art paper. In original grey printed wraps. Some light staining, creasing and wear. One of 600 copies. Lists seventy-seven items, with addenda of a further eleven. This milestone catalogue was published, according to Sims (A Life in Catalogues, 1994), in May 1949. At foot of title-page: 'N.B. This collection, with the exception of the Addenda of Books, has been sold.'

Typed Memorandum of Agreement Signed in which Freeman undertakes 'to write a contribution to THE NEW LONDON SPY edited by Hunter Davies on the subject of Male Homosexuals in London'.

Author: 
Gillian Freeman [Anthony Blond Ltd; The New London Spy]
Publication details: 
1965; London.
£75.00

One page, A4. Creased, dogeared and with a few small closed tears. The contribution was to be five thousand words in length, 'at the rate of 10 guineas for each thousand words'. Signed by 'Gillian Freeman', and by 'Desmond Brian' on behalf of Blond. Docketed record of two payments of fifty guineas in red ink manuscript in top right-hand corner.

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