WOODINGTON, Charles. Beauty and the Beasts. London: Elkin Mathews & Marrot. 1931. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s pale blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking patterned dust jacket. A very good copy, the cloth clean and bright, the gilt to the spine foot rubbed, the corners and tips just gently bumped. The binding tight and perhaps a trifle rolled, the contents clean, bright, with pencil inscription along much of the front endpaper. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine panel, toned here, with several small nicks and chips to the corners and tips. A presentable copy.
The third of only three published books by this obscure British author, this volume a short story collection whose titular story proves its central point of interest. It follows a girl of thirteen and her mother sinking into poverty and debt. Their landlord is a painter who insists on painting the young girl. Soon after, he wishes to paint her nude, and the young girl bargains her mother’s debts and future rent for this. Her life goes on, and the story unravels her emotional turmoil of male perversion. What is curious is her name—Lolita. Though published two decades before Vladimir Nabokov’s famed Lolita, the correlation is remarkably odd, or is it? In 2004, The New York Times reported Michael Maar’s discovery of a 1916 short story entitled ‘Lolita’ by Heinz von Lichberg, whose basic premise—a weirdo paedophile and his obsession with a child called Lolita—is the same, albeit lacking Nabokov’s own masteries. The titular correlations here might well be spurious, though it’s not improbable to imagine a young Nabokov to read one or both works.
WOODINGTON, Charles. Beauty and the Beasts. London: Elkin Mathews & Marrot. 1931. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s pale blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking patterned dust jacket. A very good copy, the cloth clean and bright, the gilt to the spine foot rubbed, the corners and tips just gently bumped. The binding tight and perhaps a trifle rolled, the contents clean, bright, with pencil inscription along much of the front endpaper. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine panel, toned here, with several small nicks and chips to the corners and tips. A presentable copy.
The third of only three published books by this obscure British author, this volume a short story collection whose titular story proves its central point of interest. It follows a girl of thirteen and her mother sinking into poverty and debt. Their landlord is a painter who insists on painting the young girl. Soon after, he wishes to paint her nude, and the young girl bargains her mother’s debts and future rent for this. Her life goes on, and the story unravels her emotional turmoil of male perversion. What is curious is her name—Lolita. Though published two decades before Vladimir Nabokov’s famed Lolita, the correlation is remarkably odd, or is it? In 2004, The New York Times reported Michael Maar’s discovery of a 1916 short story entitled ‘Lolita’ by Heinz von Lichberg, whose basic premise—a weirdo paedophile and his obsession with a child called Lolita—is the same, albeit lacking Nabokov’s own masteries. The titular correlations here might well be spurious, though it’s not improbable to imagine a young Nabokov to read one or both works.
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