Thursday, March 20, 2008

An addenda to James Hanley's Bibliography.

I've been working on cataloguing a big collection of James Hanley material recently. Hanley (1901-85) was an Anglo-Irish writer who lived most of his life in Wales. He wrote mainly about The Sea; bleak tales where, if the characters aren't killed quickly by their decision to go to sea, their spirits are washed away one wave at a time. Hanley has a loyal following and a few of his books are very hard to come by now. Resurrexit Dominus, about a Priest feeling the pinch of his celibacy vow; A House in the Valley by "Patric Shone", about a boy being raised by his in-laws and Emily - one I've yet to read and haven't a clue as to what it's about - are amongst the hardest to find.

During library school I worked on an addenda to Hanley's excellent bibliography by Linnea Gibbs; describing some of the items she was unable to find and adding a very few titles that had eluded her. I've renewed my interest in the addenda and may publish some of the items on this blog in near future. We'll see...

Alan Odle dustwrapper

Couldn't resist this.

Banish Boredom!

I came across this great ad. for book tokens in a copy of Life and Letters To-day, an English literary review from May of 1940. I'm still cataloguing Hanley - this is Gibbs B51 "All the Drowned" if you're interested - but I've been looking through the journals for Interwar Europe stuff and the rise of the Nazis for my friend James. I sent him a couple of scans today on the invasion of Norway and the effect of exile on German literature.

10 months into Hitler's War and they're already bored? Can you imagine a similar marketing campaign for Iraq? "Dude, fighting for democracy can be so lame! Gameboy tokens rock!"