Second Hand / Antiquarian
London Pride by Phyllis Bottome
Published: Faber and Faber, London 1942.
Condition: Good/Fair, no dust jacket. An ex-library book from the Besant Memorial Library. Boards are worn, but fully intact with no significant bumps or frayed edges. Pages are yellowed with age but otherwise clean and unmarked, binding is good.
Phyllis Bottome trained as a psychologist under Alfred Adler in Vienna in the 1920’s. While there she and her husband set up a school in Kitzbuhel. Several of her pupils went on to become well known authors, Among these were Ian Fleming and Cyril Connolly. In 1960 Fleming wrote to them saying that his life with them both was one of his most cherished memories. It has been argued that he took the idea of James Bond from the character Mark Chalmers in Bottome’s spy novel ‘The Lifeline’. Cyril Connolly wrote about his time at the school in his early work ‘The Unquiet Grave’. Her study under Alfred Adler left its mark in her work. In her novels she treats the struggles of the mind with the gravity often reserved for the supernatural. Set in wartime London in the summer of 1940, this novel tells of the Blitz as seen through the eyes of a seven year old boy Ben, named after Big Ben, whose mother is a charwoman and father a docker, living in the East End of London. First published in 1941, this is the second impression published the following year.
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In Spiritus Mundi, there is, according to William Butler Yeats, ''a universal memory and a muse of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or writer.'' To Yeats, Spiritus Mundi is the source of all ''images'' and ''symbols,'' a ''collective unconscious.''
This selection comprises The Second Coming, The Adoration of the Magi, Swedenborg, Mediums and the Desolate Places, The Celtic Element in Literature and many more.