BUTTS, Mary. Traps for Unbelievers. London: Desmond Harmsworth. 1932. Thin 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s speckled blue and white cloth lettered in red to the spine, in the dust jacket with illustration which reproduces a drawing of Mary Butts by Jean Cocteau. A good copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and very gently rolled, the contents with mild offsetting to endpapers, patchy toning to rear endpaper, else clean throughout without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped (2s net) and largely complete, loss to rear panel upper, the spine with several tiny nicks, chips and closed tears, with a handful of tiny nicks elsewhere including to front panel, one affecting ‘M’ in ‘Mary’, and mild stain to rear panel. Nevertheless uncommon.
The author’s fifty-one page tract decrying the shrinking requirement for religious belief in the Western world. Infused with Butts’s startlingly fresh style, there is both understanding and indeed commendation that humans must believe in something—humanity’s and her own belief in belief is unshakeable, she argues—yet she is infuriated by the world’s decision to worship ‘Hollywood beauties or racing motorists’, and so inflamed is her argument that one dares not wonder what Butts might have thought of today’s world.
BUTTS, Mary. Traps for Unbelievers. London: Desmond Harmsworth. 1932. Thin 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s speckled blue and white cloth lettered in red to the spine, in the dust jacket with illustration which reproduces a drawing of Mary Butts by Jean Cocteau. A good copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and very gently rolled, the contents with mild offsetting to endpapers, patchy toning to rear endpaper, else clean throughout without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped (2s net) and largely complete, loss to rear panel upper, the spine with several tiny nicks, chips and closed tears, with a handful of tiny nicks elsewhere including to front panel, one affecting ‘M’ in ‘Mary’, and mild stain to rear panel. Nevertheless uncommon.
The author’s fifty-one page tract decrying the shrinking requirement for religious belief in the Western world. Infused with Butts’s startlingly fresh style, there is both understanding and indeed commendation that humans must believe in something—humanity’s and her own belief in belief is unshakeable, she argues—yet she is infuriated by the world’s decision to worship ‘Hollywood beauties or racing motorists’, and so inflamed is her argument that one dares not wonder what Butts might have thought of today’s world.
