OCCULT

See Wheatley's entry in the Oxford DNB. In good condition, lightly aged. The aquatint bookplate, in black and white, is 10.5 x 14.5 cm (plate dimensions 9 x 12.5 cm). It was designed by Wheatley himself, and is everything you would hope from a writer in his field. A naked Wheatley, with slicked-back 1920s hairstyle, sits at the feet of a cloven-footed devil (Wheatley’s mentor G. Eric Gordon-Tombe, and the man he is alleged to have murdered) under the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

An excellent letter to enthusiastic autograph collector Eileen Margaret Cond (1911-1984). It shows Cond’s ability to draw a more than perfunctory response from her targets. 1p, 8vo. In fair condition, lightly aged and folded for postage. Signed ‘Francis Vivian’. He is ‘very grateful’ for her ‘appeciation of my book, The Three Short Men. I have to confess that I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, even though both Pam and Hathersage at times refused to obey my orders, and went their own sweet way.

Blackwood’s entry in the Oxford DNB quotes H. P. Lovecraft’s opinion that he was the author of ‘some of the finest spectral literature of this or any age’. On post card with printed stamp. In good condition, lightly worn, on light-brown card. Addressed to ‘Miss Cond, / Deer Park, / Honiton.’ Apart from the signature, Blackwood has added quotation marks and dealt with two typing mistakes in autograph. Good firm signature. Reads: ‘Savile Club, 69 Brook St, W. 1.

12mo, 53 + [iii] pp. Text clear and complete. Aged and worn, with loose original front cover, printed in green, remaining from the binding. Stamp of 'The Community of the Resurrection' on title-page. A few manuscript notes in light pencil. Scarce: five copies on COPAC, at the British Library, Oxford, Cambridge, the National Library of Scotland, and University of London, variously dated to 1909 and 1910.

Both letter and pamphlet in very good condition. Letter: 8pp., 4to. Written a few days before Russell's death on 12 March 1956. On the first page he describes how the London esoteric bookseller J. M.

1p., 12mo. On piece of aged and lightly-creased laid paper. The engraving, at the head of the page, is 7 x 9.5 cm., is a stylised full-length depiction of a young man in eighteenth-century dress, wearing a cravat, with hands on hips, standing between two trees. The poem reads 'Dear He - / Or She - / This from me, / Victor B. / Neuburg, to thee.' Second stanza: 'Not me: we, / I forgot, you see.' In bottom left-hand corner, in italics, 'Christmas, 1921.' And in italics in bottom-right: 'The Vine Press, / Steyning, / Sussex.' No other copy found listed.

4to, vii + 21 pp. Stapled pamphlet, on two different paper stocks (white and grey), front cover detached Text clear and complete. Good, on aged paper, with crease to one corner of title-leaf. Title leaf printed, the rest mimeographed. Pp. v-vii consist of an appendix at the rear of the volume. Occult pseudo-science (the Society's logo is a pentacle), presaging the hippie 'retreat from reason' in the face of Cold War realities. Begins 'For ten years the Society of Metaphysicians has worked in the interests of human unity at all levels.

4to, 2 pp. Twenty-seven lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on lightly-aged and slightly creased paper. He cannot help Raffin find an American publisher for his book 'Mystery, Mirage and Miracle' (privately printed for the author in London in 1921), although he finds its style 'delightful', and its subject matter 'one which deeply interests me'. 'The book-market is in a very strained condition - a sort of transition period with all the publishers "sitting on the fence", and the public refusing to by any books except a few which have the luck to become fashionable'.

On one side of a piece of wove paper, cut into a rectangle approximately 4.5 x 9 cm. Good, on lightly-creased paper with one vertical fold. Cut from an envelope, with traces of the postmark over the autograph, and a section of the gummed strip on the reverse. Reads 'From | John Cowper Powys | Waterloo | Blaenau - F Festiniog | Merionethshire | North Wales | I enjoyed thinking of you in Italy'.

8vo, 4 pp. Bifolium. Very good on lightly aged paper. Written in Powys's distinctive, sprawling hand. Concerns William Blake and the monograph on him (1954) by Denis Saurat, who 'must indeed be a wonder considering the scope of his interests.' 'Yes I was brought up by my mother on the Poems of Blake; so I am always interested by any reference to them or any reproduction of them. Indeed and indeed I can fully understand your being so hypnotized by the pictures of Blake that you find yourself going to see them when you had decided to go somewhere else'. Powys is 'in excellent health'.