MANNING-SANDERS, George. Drum and Monkey. London: Faber and Faber. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine with blindstamped titles to upper board. In the excellent dust jacket. A near fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The contents fine, the topstain bright, with a few mild marks to the textblock edges and prelims. The dust jacket neatly cut all four corners with printed price of 7s 6d net retained. The corners and tips trivially bumped, but a very handsome copy overall.
The author’s first of two published novels. It follows the free-thinking, deeply mysterious Charles Honey, a rag and bone merchant operating in ‘a scandalous slum area’ doors away from the eponymous pub of good earthy tradition, ‘redolent of stale beer, tobacco, spirit, and working men’. Honey raises his son with the hope of leading an alternative life, and themes of wanderlust, folkloric mystery, and a curious parent-child relationship seem all local to Manning-Sanders’ own life—he and his wife, the poet and folklorist Ruth Manning-Sanders, raised their daughter, Joan, leading a rather nomadic and certainly bohemian lifestyle among artists and authors in Cornwall and the south of France. Though George was a respected art master, he was far less successful commercially than many of his Newlyn contemporaries, including Ruth, and even their now-somewhat-lost child prodigy artist daughter, Joan, overshadowed the work of her father, having been accepted by the Royal Academy aged just thirteen. Nevertheless, the novel’s themes still paint an intriguing portrait of a mystically unusual family subtly alike the Manning-Sanders. Scarce.
MANNING-SANDERS, George. Drum and Monkey. London: Faber and Faber. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine with blindstamped titles to upper board. In the excellent dust jacket. A near fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The contents fine, the topstain bright, with a few mild marks to the textblock edges and prelims. The dust jacket neatly cut all four corners with printed price of 7s 6d net retained. The corners and tips trivially bumped, but a very handsome copy overall.
The author’s first of two published novels. It follows the free-thinking, deeply mysterious Charles Honey, a rag and bone merchant operating in ‘a scandalous slum area’ doors away from the eponymous pub of good earthy tradition, ‘redolent of stale beer, tobacco, spirit, and working men’. Honey raises his son with the hope of leading an alternative life, and themes of wanderlust, folkloric mystery, and a curious parent-child relationship seem all local to Manning-Sanders’ own life—he and his wife, the poet and folklorist Ruth Manning-Sanders, raised their daughter, Joan, leading a rather nomadic and certainly bohemian lifestyle among artists and authors in Cornwall and the south of France. Though George was a respected art master, he was far less successful commercially than many of his Newlyn contemporaries, including Ruth, and even their now-somewhat-lost child prodigy artist daughter, Joan, overshadowed the work of her father, having been accepted by the Royal Academy aged just thirteen. Nevertheless, the novel’s themes still paint an intriguing portrait of a mystically unusual family subtly alike the Manning-Sanders. Scarce.
