[ CROWLEY, Aleister, Oscar Wilde related works] D'ARCH SMITH, Timothy.

Bunbury. Two Notes on Oscar Wilde. Aleister Crowley and the Origin of "Bunbury' & A Source for the Importance of Being Earnest [ with associated ephemera ].

Bicary, France: The Winged Lion, 1998. First Edition. Softcover. Booklet. Octavo. (20pp) Violet French-fold thick paper wrappers with black titling. Printed on Zerkall mould-made paper. Limited edition, this copy not numbered but someone has written "250 copies" in pencil on the limitation page. Loosely inserted are an autograph note, signed, by Timothy's D'Arch Smith to the previous owner, English bibliophile and Aleister Crowley scholar Nicholas Bishop-Culpeper, as well as a typed letter signed from the publisher to Bishop-Culpeper, and an A4 computer generated prospectus for the work. "Bunbury" is a wonderful piece of literary detective work by the author of "The Books of the Beast", "Alembic" etc. Bunburying is a term that was introduced by Oscar Wilde in the play ' The Importance of Being Earnest,' to convey the practice of inventing of an imaginary friend-in-distress or similar reason as a pretext to excuse oneself from a social obligation. Various explanations have been posited for the origin of the term: Aleister Crowley had his own, apparently based on inside knowledge, which he conveyed in a letter to his acquaintance Bruce Lockhart. Tim D'Arch Smith uses this letter as the metaphorical starting point of this essay, in which he examines not just the origins of the term 'Bunburying,' but more broadly the homosexual underworld of 1890s England, Crowley's position in it, and the threads of acquaintance that connected him to Wilde. Booklet and ephemera all in Fine condition. Item #62628

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