The Argonauts.
Boleskine, Foyers: Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, 1904. First Edition. Softcover. Octavo, (vi) 18 (ii) 20 (ii) 20 (ii) 24 (ii) 24pp., Dark green camel hair wrappers with title in red on upper wrapper, and "Jason . Argo . Medea . Sirenae . Ares" lettered up spine. Machine made paper. Though much favoured by Crowley, the "camel hair" binding material was not at all durable. According to Duncombe-Jewell only 202 copies were printed: 2 on Roman vellum, and 200 thus, on machine made paper. A play in five parts - each act of which is "a separate play on the Greek model, separately paginated." The play was to have been published by Kegan Paul, but when Crowley discovered how poor the sales of his earlier works had been, he decided to published and distribute his works himself under the S.P.R.T. (Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth) imprint (the name being a none-too-subtle jest at the expense of the well known Christian publishing house the S.P.C.K. - Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge). "The Argonauts" was thus the first book to be published under this new imprint. The "camel hair" material is notoriously fragile - and thus a genuinely scarce work - it had a tiny printing and the already small number of copies in circulation have arguably been greatly reduced by its far from sturdy binding. From the collection of English bibliophile and Aleister Crowley scholar Nicholas Bishop-Culpeper, with his book-label lightly tipped in at front (it could be easily removed, but it would be a shame to do so). Second, tasteful architecturaly-themed bookplate of "C. W. Whitaker, A.M." on the inside of the front wrapper. Spine a bit sunned (faded), all edges rubbed with some chipping to the wrappers at corners and particularly at spine ends. Now protected by mylar jacket. Front hinge splitting but holding, page edges darkened, some pages lightly browned with some very faint scattered foxing. Still overall a solid VG copy. Item #60997
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