STACPOOLE, Henry de Vere. The Naked Soul. London: Collins. 1933. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in grey to the spine, in the appealing dust jacket whose design goes sadly uncredited. This copy signed and inscribed by the author to the front endpaper. An about very good copy. The cloth slightly mottled and marked all panels, gently bumped to corners and tips, but the binding tight and fairly firm. The contents fine but for some apparent tape ghosting to p. 28-29. The dust jacket very sharp and bright, priced 7/6 net to the spine, a trifle crimped and rubbed at some corners and edges, but a most pleasing example.
‘A veritable thing of beauty’, in which a party of Englishmen reach a seemingly uninhabited island only to discover ‘a young woman of ravishing beauty’ (see jacket) living among the enriching flora and fauna, her now deceased mother having been long abandoned by a callous adventurer. Stacpoole, of Dublin descent and associated with the Yellow Book group of writers and artists, is probably only known today for his sexually awake fantasy novel, The Blue Lagoon (1908) which contains themes that ran through many of his novels—sexual undercurrents, pilfering servicemen, and exotic locales. In fact, his adoration of exotic locations and the nature which surrounds them, and indeed the central female character in this novel, might derive from his own mother’s childhood experiences—though Irish, she spent her early years in very rural Canada. Uncommon in the jacket, scarce inscribed.
STACPOOLE, Henry de Vere. The Naked Soul. London: Collins. 1933. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in grey to the spine, in the appealing dust jacket whose design goes sadly uncredited. This copy signed and inscribed by the author to the front endpaper. An about very good copy. The cloth slightly mottled and marked all panels, gently bumped to corners and tips, but the binding tight and fairly firm. The contents fine but for some apparent tape ghosting to p. 28-29. The dust jacket very sharp and bright, priced 7/6 net to the spine, a trifle crimped and rubbed at some corners and edges, but a most pleasing example.
‘A veritable thing of beauty’, in which a party of Englishmen reach a seemingly uninhabited island only to discover ‘a young woman of ravishing beauty’ (see jacket) living among the enriching flora and fauna, her now deceased mother having been long abandoned by a callous adventurer. Stacpoole, of Dublin descent and associated with the Yellow Book group of writers and artists, is probably only known today for his sexually awake fantasy novel, The Blue Lagoon (1908) which contains themes that ran through many of his novels—sexual undercurrents, pilfering servicemen, and exotic locales. In fact, his adoration of exotic locations and the nature which surrounds them, and indeed the central female character in this novel, might derive from his own mother’s childhood experiences—though Irish, she spent her early years in very rural Canada. Uncommon in the jacket, scarce inscribed.
