The Goddess of Ghosts
London: Burns & Oates Ltd., 1915. First edition. Octavo, original brown paper boards, pale gray cloth spine with original paper spine label printed in red and black, brown endpapers, uncut. Owner label to rear endpaper, slight lean to toned spine, modest wear to printed label, corners bumped. Very good indeed. Item #1613
"WHENEVER SHE SAW AN OLD GRANDMOTHER SITTING IN THE SUN, HER ROSARY SLIPPING BETWEEN HER FINGERS, HER HEART LEPT WITH CATHOLIC DELIGHT"
First edition of The Goddess of Ghosts, the English Jesuit's collection of short stories—influential in understanding the emerging study of the History of Religions. This copy was essentially extra-illustrated and bound for Stanley Scott (a prominent Gill collector) with information on Eric Gill's "Three Martlets" device ("Nos Ne Cesses Thom Tueri").
After a boyhood conversion in 1897, Cyril Charles Martindale entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained in 1911. As a Classicist at Oxford University, Martindale emerged as a vital mind in the Catholic Literary Revival. Father Martindale, "urbane and ubiquitous" (Tom Burns) was, "along with Father D'Arcy, the most celebrated of the Jesuits responsible for bringing so many converts, literary and otherwise, into the Church" (Joseph Pearce).
An exploration of theological ideas with literary language, The Goddess of Ghosts was a Catholic response to Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough, repudiating the nineteenth-century skepticism Frazer represented. "Martindale began writing stories expressing his intuition about the relationship between Christianity and pre-Christian religion as early as his Oxford years, 1904–5. His short story, 'The Goddess of Ghosts,' published around this time in the Jesuit periodical The Month was his first foray into this genre and would provide the name for his collection of similarly themed short stories that he would publish in 1915. His biographer, Philip Caraman describes 'The Goddess of Ghosts' as emanating from Martindale’s personal feeling for the 'Latin world,' and in particular for the nature religion of pre-Christian early Rome as well as the 'mystic, almost Christian' poetry of Virgil. The stories The Goddess of Ghosts feature the intersection of pre-Christian nature religion and Christianity in a number of unusual ways. They pay particular attention to the question of 'life' and the common reverence in pre-Christian religion and Christianity for the entanglement of human life with the life of nature. Martindale sets his stories either in classical antiquity in which pre-Christian characters, weary of their philosophy and failing religious enthusiasm, encounter the new Christian religion; or in modern times in which Christian characters (frequently jaded Englishmen) see Christianity afresh through some kind of encounter with the pre-Christian past. In the last story, 'The Faun,' Martindale illustrates most clearly the thesis in 'The Cults and Christianity' about the mysterious intuition of Christ and his sacrifice in the pre-Christian reverence for the divine origin of human life and nature" (Anna Svendsen).
An early collaboration for Burns and Oates between Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison, The Goddess of Ghosts was the first book with a title page border of printer's flowers, "a style of decoration that almost became a signature of Morison's and my typographic work" (Francis Meynell. My Lives). Tipped in are pages from The Dublin Review (published by Burns & Oates) from October 1915, showcasing "Three Martlets," the engraving by Gill containing the coat of arms of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (Nos Ne Cesses Thom Tueri). The 1951 letter, from M.T. Slater of the editorial department at Burns & Oates, explains that the engraving was used by the publisher during this period (as is the case with this book) and had also been recently revived for use in colophon variants. Slater also attaches a small proof of the engraving to the letter. Joseph Pearce, Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief; Anna Svendsen. C.C. Martindale, the History of Religions, and the Theological Imagination of David Jones. Journal of Jesuit Studies 8 (2021); Skelton. Eric Gill: The Engravings, P28; Evan R. Gill. Bibliography of Eric Gill, 310.
Price: $300.00