The Vicar of Morwenstow; Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A.
London: Methuen & Co., 1899. Octavo, original red cloth, gilt spine and front board, uncut. Spine a little toned, a hint of wear to spine ends, internally clean and fresh. Very good copy indeed. Item #1590
"HE HAD HIMSELF PHOTOGRAPHED IN CASSOCK, SURPLICE, STOLE AND BIRETTA, AS A PRIEST. IT WAS HIS LAST CONSCIOUS ACT"
"New and Revised Edition" of the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould's Life of R.S. Hawker, the Anglican Poet of Victorian Cornwall—"loved for its true flavour of Hawker and the west country" (ODNB). Complete with a handsome frontispiece photograph of Hawker in monochrome—this copy comes from the library of E.M. Forster, with his ink signature on the blank flyleaf. A handsome association copy.
Written while he was living in East Mersea, Essex, Baring-Gould's biography of Morwenstow's eccentric Parson was first published in 1876, shortly after Hawker's death. This new edition demonstrated a continuing interest in Hawker and was part of a wave of new editions and reissues such John Lane's editions of Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall (1903) and Cornish Ballads (1904), where the editor, C.E. Byles, described Hawker as "peculiar in his methods of publication, as in other matters." Baring-Gould's biography has been "criticized for glaring inaccuracies but loved for its true flavour of Hawker and the west country" (ODNB). Baring-Gould compares Hawker favorably with contemporaries such as Tennyson and describes his deathbed conversion to Catholicism in August 1875.
Signed by E.M. Forster, this copy was later gifted by Forster to his friend Eric Fletcher, who had met him when he was an undergraduate at King's College between 1945 and 1948. The 68-year-old Forster was, by then, firmly settled into Cambridge college life, living the life of a traditional bachelor don, "he was looked after; he was among friends; he knew the way of life and loved the city and its buildings...and at his age it was convenient" (Furbank). Forster modestly put up with his great fame, finding his enormous daily mail a nuisance but enjoying a stream of visitors, many of them young men who looked on him as a mentor or sage. One of these young men was Eric Fletcher. They immediately struck up a warm friendship and embarked on a correspondence of "several hundred letters of gossip, affection and advice" (Furbank) which would continue until Forster's death. Printed for Methuen & Company at Aberdeen University Press and bound with the publisher's catalogue (dated, "February 1899") at the rear. P.N. Furbank. E.M. Forster: A Life.
Price: $500.00