Tuesday 28 August 2018

Found at the Fair

Yesterday was the day of the Environmental Fair, when wizened hippies, folkies, musoes, Lefties, Greenies and representatives of countless other tribes make their annual descent on Carshalton Park to mingle with the locals. I always rather enjoy it, but chiefly for the opportunity to scour the abundantly stocked second-hand book stalls.
  This year's finds were the jolly little threesome (all three are pleasingly compact volumes) pictured above. Sonnets from the Portuguese is a beautifully presented volume published by the Peter Pauper Press of Mount Vernon, New York, printed in Janson types on excellent paper, with woodblock decorations on every page. La Grande Thérèse, a spin-off from Hilary Spurling's life of Matisse, tells the story of Thérèse Humbert and 'the scandal that nearly destroyed the French Third Republic'. Barbara Comyns's Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is an earlier novel by the author of the extraordinary The Vet's Daughter, which I enjoyed a few years ago
  All this lot for £1.40. Not bad, eh?

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