[ G. A. Beale, spelling reformer. ] Two Typed Letters (one signed 'G. A. Beale', the other incomplete) to Philip Howard of The Times, on his system of spelling reform. With his booklet 'Items: The First Book Printed in Advanced English Orthography'.

The three items in good condition, with light signs of age and wear. Booklet: [2] + iv + 29 + [2]pp., 8vo. With fold-out table at front. Nicely printed in green paper wraps with white label printed in red and black. According to the colophon 'The type is 14 point Monotype Bembo 270 augmented by 7 newly designd characters engraved by Ludlow Ltd Hertford | About 100 copies impressed on Archive Text paper in September 1989'. A four-page 'Introduction Printed in Corrected English Orthography' explains how Beale's new system of spelling (employing thirteen 'new characters') has grown out of his 'Corrected English Orthography'. The six examples of the new system comprise passages from Milton, Gibbon, Shelley, Alaric Watts, 'From my Diary for Friday, 26th August, 1949', and a postscript. Six copies on OCLC WorldCat and COPAC, only two of them in Britain (British Library and Cambridge). TWO: TLS to Howard, 1 November 1989, Cadenza Press letterhead. 1p., 4to. First page only, and so without signature. Written in 'Corrected English Orthography', and replying to Howard's 'articl [sic] "Proper English Accents" in the Times of 3rd October': 'your comments on the necessity for accents in forein words in the language surely indicate that 26 letters are not enuff'. THREE: TLS to Howard, 25 November 1989, on Wellington Road letterhead. 2pp., 4to. Replying to Howard's letter written four days before. Howard has noted a 'number of errors in "Items"', but Beale only looked on it as 'a learning and testing exercise'. 'You write: "my revolutionary system". Now that is unkind. No one abhors revolution more than I: it is anti-human and anti-evolutionary. I count amongst the enemies of spelling reform the revolutionaries who want to disfigure the face of English for intellectual reasons. Shaw was the arch-fiend, the man who set England against improving English orthografy: but he was a socialist, bound to be wrong and violent, either by inclination or accident. [...] I contend that my Advanced English Orthografy is not revolutionary because all its increments are based on elements of the present orthografy, and the new symbols are closely related in form and sound to the letters from which they are derived.' He concludes by stating that there are 'two opposing camps' regarding the topic, which 'stand too far apart to hear each other, and the subject is relegated to the limbo'.