Arnold Haskell on Bullfighting

Three articles on the corrida (Spanish bullfighting) by the ballet-critic Arnold Haskell: ‘The Corrida as Spectacle,’ New English Weekly, vol. 1, no. 24 (29 September 1932), pp. 565–6; ‘The Corrida and the Humanitarian, ibid., no. 25 (6 October 1932), pp. 590–1; and ‘The Literature of the Corrida,’ ibid., vol. 2, no. 7 (1 December 1932), pp. 155–6. The latter reviews Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Death in the Afternoon’ and Roy Campbell’s ‘Taurine Provence.’ I am reproducing them because they are interesting and not otherwise available online. If you own the copyright and want them taken down, let me know.

A. R. D. Fairburn, ‘On Work’ (1932)

A nice little article ‘On Work’ by A. R. D. Fairburn from the New English Weekly, vol. 2, no. 4 (10 November 1932), pp. 83–4. I reproduce it here as it is otherwise unavailable online. If you own the copyright and you would like it taken down, let me know.

The New English Weekly was founded by A. R. Orage in 1932. In many respects it was a continuation of what the New Age had been under Orage’s editorship with many familiar contributors (A. J. Penty, Ezra Pound, Anthony Ludovici) and themes (guild socialism, Nietzsche, the latest in literary modernism); though it was, for my money, more straightforwardly a ‘movement paper’ than the New Age had ever been, the movement in question being Social Credit.

‘Rex’ Fairburn was a poet New Zealand and a friend of Count Potocki de Montalk.

This article very satisfyingly skewers the poisonous doctrine doctrine of the dignity of honest toil. Though some of Fairburn’s references are out of date (‘Public School code,’ etc.), the evil he identifies is still alive and active.

Jonathan Bowden's Early Writing (1989–95)

This list is based on details gleaned from online catalogues (mainly Amazon’s Good Reads website, which seems even more comprehensive than Google Books) and from the catalogues of the six Legal Deposit Libraries of Ireland and the UK (the Bodleian in Oxford, the British Library in London, the Cambridge University Library, Trinity College Library in Dublin and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales). I have also examined the six-volume Collected Works at the British Library and the Cambridge University Library.

Jonathan Bowden on Jonathan Bowden

I just returned from the library, where I was inspecting vol. 3 of Jonathan Bowden’s very rare Collected Works, 6 vols. (London: Avant-Garde, 1995). I examined the first two volumes a couple of years ago. I will look at the remaining three as soon as time permits.

The Collected Works mark the transition, in my view, from the first to the second period in Bowden’s writing life. This was a transition of which Bowden was himself aware. Below are gathered a few snippets of ‘Bowden on Bowden’ from vol. 3. I hope this will be of all the more interest given how vanishingly rare and difficult to access texts from this period are, especially these Collected volumes.