New Bibliographies of Note

Three bibliographies have recently been published that fans of rare books and book-on-books will want to investigate and consider adding to their bookshelves.

Kearney, Patrick J.. The Paris Olympia Press. Edited by Angus Carroll. University of Chicago Press, distributed for Liverpool University Press. 360 p., 16 color plates. Cloth $39.00.

Patrick J. Kearney, the renowned historian of erotic literature who has made compiling bibliographies of the major and minor publishers of clandestine and otherwise erotica his life’s work, here fulfills and completes a project that began in 1975 with his Handlist of Books Published by the Olympia Press and continued with The Paris Olympia Press, his fleshing out of the handlist that Black Spring Press issued in 1987. This new volume, the definitive work, is the fully descriptive and comprehensive result of over thirty-two years of study and contains a trove of information not found in the earlier incarnations.

No one knows more about the Paris Olympia Press (he also compiled a bibliography of the New York Olympia Press) than Mr. Kearney who, in the course of his research, became an close friend of its publisher, Maurice Girodias.

Editor Angus Carroll was well suited to the job: His father, Jock Carroll, wrote Bottoms Up, an Olympia Press erotic romp that Girodias published in 1961.

Mr. Kearney hosts the most scholarly, accurate and informative website devoted to rare erotic literature, Scissors and Paste Bibliographies. It’s the go-to site for those serious on the subject.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a friend of Pat Kearney for twenty years and have made some minor contributions to his research. The only payment I’ve received from him is the pleasure of his company and selected content of his mind.

Pearson, Neil. Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press. Liverpool University Press. 494 p. Cloth $39.00.

Pearson delivers a triple-whammy, here providing a history and bibliography of the famed press that boldly issued Henry Miller’s first books, as well as books by Anais Nin (Winter of Artifice), Lawrence Durrell (The Black Book), James Hanley (Boy) and more who couldn’t find their way into print otherwise, including Cecil Barr, pseudonym of Jack Kahane, publisher of Obelisk Press, and father of Maurice Girodias.

Pearson’s third wing here is a full biography of Kahane, heretofore primarily known, if at all, though his autobiography, Memoirs of a Booklegger (1939). Issued in a very small run, Memoirs of a Booklegger is impossibly difficult to find in decent shape; some years ago, while managing William Dailey Rare Books, I bought erotica scholar G. Legman’s copy from his widow and it was, at best, a “reading copy”: a mess. It has recently been reprinted by Handsack Press with a Foreword by his granddaughter Juliette Kahane. It is available through Gary Mier’s website, First Published In Paris. Gary also offers through the site a full color poster displaying all the books of the Obelisk Press. It’s quite attractive.

In Memoirs…, Kahane gave us more of all we didn’t care about him and less of what we did, so Pearson has done a real service and a fine job cutting though the self-mythologizing to get to the real man. That said, Memoirs of a Booklegger is the place to start when studying Kahane, who died shortly after Memoirs… was published in 1939 on the eve of WWII. His son, Maurice (who illustrated the cover to the first edition of Tropic of Cancer), changed his name to Girodias as the Germans were marching into Paris; the Kahanes were Jewish and Maurice enjoyed living too much to risk likely extermination.

These two bibliographies are companion pieces, and there was some pre-publication discussion about releasing them as a boxed set; alas, no go.

Whether a rare book collector or dealer, if you have any interest in erotic literature in general and Obelisk Press and Olympia Press in particular, these bibliographies are essential references for your shelf.

Oak Knoll Press seriously considered publishing Kearney’s new Olympia Press bibliography but for reasons unknown to me decided not to. Too bad, as Oak Knoll’s marketing and distribution is stronger than University of Chicago’s.

Speaking of Oak Knoll…

Sewell, Brian and Clare Imholtz. An Annotated International Bibliography of Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Books. Oak Knoll Press. 274 pp. Cloth. $95.

Oak Knoll Press, a subsidiary of Bob Fleck’s Oak Knoll Books in Delaware, has been providing scholars, collectors, and dealers with reprints of key books-on-books and new publications of same for many years now. Here, Oak Knoll has published the only full-length reference to the long neglected Sylvie and Bruno books of Lewis Carroll. It’s a full, descriptive bibliography containing over 1000 entries and a thirty-page essay by Anne Clark Amor. This is an extremely important reference, not just for scholars and fans of Lewis Carroll but for scholars and lovers of Victorian literature as well.