Item #52292 Fielding Sargeant: a novel. Elsa BARKER, signed.
Fielding Sargeant: a novel.

Fielding Sargeant: a novel.

New York: Dutton, 1922. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 320pp. Red cloth lettered in gilt on spine & front board. INSCRIBED & SIGNED by the author on front free endpaper. An unusual novel with a strong psychological thread running through it: thre are a considerable number of references to Freud, Jung and their theories (surely this must be one of the first English language novels to incorporate the theories of Jung?) as well as some metaphysical/occult aspects. The author, Elsa Barker (1869-1954), was an initiate of the Alpha et Omega (sometimes referred to as the "Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega") the group of former Golden Dawn Initiates who remained loyal to S. L. MacGregor Mathers. While she was born in Vermont and lived most of her life in New York City, from 1910 to 1914, she lived in Paris and London, and frequently traveled between Europe and the States, and therefore was drafted by Mathers' to act as his emissary to the American temples of the A.O. Also a poet and novelist, Barker was said to be a natural medium, and produced through automatic writing three series of texts, which were published as "Letters from a Living Dead Man" (1914), "War Letters from the Living Dead Man" (1915), and "Last Letters from a Living Dead Man" (1919). Cloth frayed and chipped at spine ends, corners rubbed at points, spine lettering darkened, spine a little faded and faded strip across bottom inch of front board faded. Endpapers unevenly toned, page-edges browned, still a solid Good+ copy of a genuinely rare novel (lacks dust jacket). Item #52292

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