knox editor punch 1881 1971 (9 résultats)

Hardcover. Arthur Watts. (illustrateur). 1st edition. 128 p.; 19 cm. Imprint on tailpiece: Benn. Includes `faint echoes' (parodies) of John Masefield, A. E. Housman, A. C. Swinburne, Andrew Marvell, Matthew Arnold, John Still, Ben Jonson, John Keats, Lord Byron, Edward Fitzgerald and Robert Burns. VG orig.azure cloth and endpapers in edgeworn dj. Without foxing.

Card with stamp and postmark. Of the two addresses in her letterhead, she has deleted the London one (105 Hallam Street, W1). In good condition, lightly aged and worn. Addressed to 'Secretary to | E. V. Knot [sic] Eq. | Offices of "Punch"'. The card reads: 'Miss de Casalis hopes to broadcast Mr. Knot's "Reparation" at the end of her turn on Friday 27th 9.35 to 10.15 (Forces programme) & again on Sunday to Forces abroad.'.

See Knox's entry in the Oxford DNB, along with those of his father Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, his brothers Ronald, Dillwyn and Wilfred, his wife the 'Mary Poppins' illustrator Mary Shepard (daughter of Ernest Shepard) and his daughter the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. At the time the present material was composed Knox had been involved with Punch for more than four decades (1904-1948), holding the editorship for the last sixteen, with the magazines circulation rising to a peak of almost 200,000 as he approached his retirement. He was well aware of Punch's place as a national institution - according to the Punch historian R. G. G. Price, colleagues remarked that 'working with him was a little like helping to edit the Journal of Hellenic Studies' - and the respect he felt for the magazine is apparent in the present material, which comprises two talks, both given immediately after Knox's retirement. Apparently unpublished, the material provides an astute and entertaining overview of the magazine, its achievements (including, Knox claims, the invention of the modern cartoon, of the name Crystal Palace, and of the institution of Poppy Day) and its place in British social history; and are well-written with wit and evident pride and including some personal observations. Of the four items, one (Item Three) is in autograph, the others typed; with each page in all four on a separate leaf. The first talk is complete, the second lacks three pages of twenty-two; of the two drafts the typescript (Item Four) lacks two pages, while around half of the autograph (Item Three) is present. The material is in good overall condition. While there is a degree of overlap, the first talk (Item One, 1948) deals with Punch's place in the British social history, and the second (Item Two, c.1949) with the politics of the magazine, with Knox addressing its Radical origins from a firmly Conservative standpoint. Items Three and Four are drafts of Item One. ONE. Complete carbon typescript of talk entitled '100 Years of Punch', headed 'Hampstead Subscription Library. November, 1948'. 18pp, foolscap 8vo. Single-spaced on eighteen leaves (the first two larger than the others). Slight creasing to first few leaves, but in good overall condition. Complete; with a duplicate copy that lacks the last page. Knox begins with a lighthearted explanation of his intentions in giving the talk: 'what I am going to say is really no more than a personal impression of Punch. Let me at once, and at the outset correct a possible misapprehension. I have not myself been connected with Punch for a hundred years. The first printed contribution I made to it was in 1905, so that for a good deal of the history of the paper, which was started in 1841, I have to trust to the records and the memories of others, and to the bound volumes of the past.' While it is, as he explains, 'that earlier part with which I have nothing to do that I should like to speak chiefly tonight - a Victorian period of Punch about as distant from the age we now live in as ancient Greece or Rome', but first of all he would like to say 'a word or two about recent Editors'. He describes how, 'despite the lapse of time and the stupendous changes in our national life the publication of Punch has been continued unbroken week after week', apart from in 1946, when 'two consecutive numbers failed to appear, and under my Editorship. This was due not to my own shortcomings but the shortcomings of coal. But it broke the continuity and we had to be content with two cartoons published by courtesy of The Times. Doubtless all the former editors turned in their graves to reproach me.' He gives an account of the removal of the celebrated Punch table (carved with initials of contributors, and now in the British Library) from Bouverie Street during the Second World War, and describes the portraits of contributors which hang on the walls of the dining room, in a line which 'runs round three walls and a half, and nobody knows what will happen when the photograph of the latest member of the staff eventually meets the photograph of Mark Lemon. | They are very impressive those old photographs, for almost everyone is stout, everyone has whiskers, nearly everyone has a beard. It is only in the later and leaner years of this century that they become haggard and shaven and slim.' There follows a spirited passage (covering almost a whole page) lamenting the passing of the Victorian heyday of Punch. It begins: 'What a world! What a life! No films! no radio! no motor cars! No queues, no coupons, no passports, no telephones, electric light only struggling to be born. Who would not be back in those days of antimacassars, of plenty, prosperity - at any rate for the well-to-do, when you were never interrupted in the middle of a meal by the tiresome buzzing of a bell, and when meals were well worthy of not being interrupted. | When you did not have to so apportion your week, as not to miss some tedious lecture on the air, which might clash with a murder story from Hollywood on the screen. | Days of crinolines, days of chignons, days of bustles, days of bathing machines and bathing dresses like bell tents.' He points to some of the magazine's Victorian high spots: 'Days, or rather nights, of Mr and Mrs Caudle, days of Tom Noddy and Mr Briggs, days of the Ponsonby de Tomkyns, of little Grigsby and Sir Gorgius Midas, of Edwin and Angelina, of the ducal sitting room, the impertinent flunkey, and the obsequious tradesman. Days when curates had eggs. Days when it was beginning to dawn on the consciousness of the astounded reader that the domestics hidden away in the basement might rebel against carrying coals to the fourth floor'. Noting 'how vast the proportion of the time of our subscribers appears to have been spent in the hunting field', he discusses the magazine's treatment of hunting, with reference to the 'amazingly talented' John Leech, and a bon mot of his at a staff dinner in 1859. Next Knox turns to 'the greates.

The diary is a 4to, with around 100pp. (a week's entries on each leaf). In worn and marked printed olive boards with cloth spine; internally good and sound on lightly-aged paper. No ownership inscription, but from the E. V. Knox papers, and with entries in Knox's hand and that of his wife Mary, illustrator of Mary Poppins, and daughter of 'Winnie the Pooh' illustrator Ernest Shepard. The eighteen inserted items, in good overall condition, are described here before the contents of the diary. ONE: Part of an essay in Knox's hand, headed 'Joanna Baillie' (2pp, 8vo, on two leaves numbered 23 and 24). With his tongue in his cheek, Knox notes 'a curious cutting from "The Times" of some year in the early 1920's. It is a review by Sir John Squire of a book on the life and work of this poet by a young American woman. It is a thesis written for the Doctorate of Philosophy. It is the first book on Joanna Baillie to be published in English, unless you count a long introduction to her works in 1851. It is perhaps the only book in English on Joanna Baillie. Naturally there are three German works devoted to her.' The extract ends with an account of her 'Byron went to a performance of one of her plays ("The Family Legend"), with Miss Baillie herself & the Walter Scotts and this must have been the occasion she speaks of when she writes in a letter: | "Byron was provoked beyond measure at being here with us, & made faces as he sat behind us." Joanna Baillie of course was a Quaker. Lord Byron was not.' The extract is paperclipped to a cutting of Squire's long article (headed 'Books of the Day'), describing such works as the American author's 'monuments of misapplied industry and ingenuity'; chipped and creased, on browning paper. TWO: Autograph extract (1p, 4to) of draft essay by Knox on 'light verse'. Twenty-two lines, with a few deletions and emendations, on worn frayed paper chipped at the edges, but with text legible. Begins: 'Well that is the end of that nonsense and no doubt you are relieved. But there is I believe a quite truthful point in it.' He asserts that light verse has become 'an absurdly artificial and specialised thing, tied not only to rigid meters but mock poetical diction [.] It is done for he sake of brevity, for the sake of point, for the sake of easy remembrance, or just because we feel like it. [.]'. THREE: Three miscellaneous pages (all 8vo), on separate leaves, each extracted from a talk or paper (or all from the same one?) regarding Hampstead Topology. One, numbered 3, includes a discussion of how 'Hampstead Topographical History' could be divided 'roughly into four periods'; the second discusses how, in 'the middle of last century, old Hampstead reached I suppose its highest point of population'; the last, carries a few words beginning 'pamphlet by de Koch'. FOUR: Topographical notes by Knox. Brief autograph notes (1p, 12m), on Frognal letterhead, headed 'HAMPSTEAD as HAUNT OF DISREPUTABLE OR NOT TO REPUTABLE AMUSEMENTS | 1700-1800', and another page of notes (1p, 12mo), in green ink, on Hampstead topography ('HAMPSTEDE HETHE | WATER CONDUITS'). FIVE: Cancelled typed 4to page headed 'E. V. KNOX | Notes, conversations, recollections at Grove Cottage | 110 Frognal, Hampstead.' Unpublished. Apparently the start of a memoir by Mrs Knox. The author explains that Knox was 'reluctant to sit down and write solemn memoirs or make extra work with a lot of dictations. Some of his reminiscences were not to be drawn upon - well remembered but painful. | Evoe kept a few years' diaries in the 1950's and 1960's. The most recent are unread. | He told me about his life and as my memory isn't reliable I put down what I could and when, on envelopes and scraps of paper and in note-books, sometimes following him from room to room or into the garden. We had a tape-recorder but this was in a way an instrument of torture. As was the telephone - [.] Evoe was never brisk on he telephone. He answered it with a long "Hull-oh", that one would have known at once from any place in the world.' On the reverse of this page is the first page of the following. SIX: Parts of a manuscript inventory by Knox's widow Mary of incoming correspondence and ephemera. Seven autograph pages (5pp 4to; 2pp 12mo) on four leaves, each leaf dated to 1976, all in Mrs Knox's autograph. Mainly consisting of lists of authors and date of receipt of letters, occasionally with a single-phrase synopsis. One page is headed 'General Hampstead box 2 1976'. Other headings: 'Odds and ends Hampstead box 2 1976 | Note on Joanna Baillie'; '1976 Odds & ends & 60's letters'; 'Odds & ends Hampstead box 2. 1976.' SEVEN: Autograph synopses by Mrs Knox of diary entries for January 1954 (2pp, 12mo, headed 'Diaries EVK 14 Jan. 1954) and February 1954 (2pp, 12mo, headed 'Diaries 1954. EVK. Feb. 1954.'), listing appointments arranged for the coming months. EIGHT: Small collection of correspondence/ephemera, comprising: Typed Circular Signed and TNS from F. R. D'O. Monro, Clerk, Wells & Campden Charity (the latter with page of anagrams by Knox in pencil on reverse); card for AGM of Hampstead Subscription Library; receipt for Christ Church Centenary Fund; ACS from Katherine Beamish to Knox, giving details of AGM of Hampstead Parochial School; two Typed Circulars from P. H. Harrold, Hampstead Town Clerk, one regarding the laying of the foundation stone for West End Branch Library, the other a National Trust exhibition on Hampstead; typed circular regarding a planning appeal meeting; typed invitation to Hampstead Heath and Old Hampstead Protection Society committee meeting. NINE: The diary contains terse entries giving details of appointments, with names of individuals, libraries, associations (e.g. Hampstead Heath Protection Society and Wells & Campden Charity), educational establishments. There are a few evocative entries. On 15 July: 'Opener for Osbert Sitwell | 8.30 Stanfield House'. On 15 December: 'No Punch lunch'. Also: 'The Listener B.B.C. Party, the Dor.

See Knox's entry in the Oxford DNB. The two items are in fair condition, lightly aged and creased, each with a couple of lightly-rusted pin holes. Clemens's plain card, with stamps and postmarks, is addressed to 'E. V. Knox Esq / c/o Punch / London, England.', and is signed 'faithfully / C C Clemens'. The message reads: 'Dear E.V. Knox / We hope the life of President Truman reached you safely? / The Society is arranging a symposium on democracy You may care to send your definition of democracy and a few comments. / Are you writing your Memoirs?' The unsigned typed carbon copy of Knox's reply is 1p, 12mo. After thanking Clemens for the book and the card he writes: 'I don't think my views on Democracy are very original. It seems to me simply a right to express an opinion. By Vote? Perhaps. In print? Possibly. By consent of the Police? NO. Good luck with the Society.' He ends with a witty twist: 'As for my memoirs, well I've been asked [last word underlined] to write them by several people. There are limits of course - even to Democracy.'.

See Knox's entry in the Oxford DNB, along with those of his father and three brothers. 8pp, 4to. Paginated and complete; on eight leaves held together with a rusting paperclip. In fair condition, aged and creased. A fair copy, with occasional emendations. There is no indication that this essay was published. A polished piece of writing by an accomplished essayist, lightly humorous but with serious intent, Knox's aim being to put forward the view that modern childhood is more self-indulgent than that of previous generations, and results is the self-deceit of adults who have never grown up. Knox sets out his case at the start: 'This is the age of the child. | If I have heard that sentence once, I have heard it a thousand times, but I doubt whether most people who use it realise what it means. It is a confession of decadence and despair. | To being with, if our age is an age of children, it means that children are growing rate. You cannot place eight or nine olive branches (as they used to be called) on marble pedestals and admire them the whole day long. They keep hopping off the pedestal and making a hideous din. It is the solitary child surrounded by fifteen stuffed animals which is adored.' 'The modern child', he writes later, 'as far as I can see, has no future before it. It does not want to grow up. Why should it? There are no restrictions or limitations placed upon its happiness. Grown ups surround it like a gang of fawning slaves. Why should it be willing to throw aside its position of independence and imperious sovereignty, and pass into servitude? It has its dances and suppers, and razzles along in its own little motor car.' There are occasional references to Knox's own childhood, most notably the following passage: 'I always wanted - I aspired, I may say - to be a tram conductor. I never have been a tram conductor, and I never shall be, now, except perhaps during a general strike. Well. I dont want to be a tram conductor. But the hope, the joy of aspiration, while they lasted, were splendid enough. The prohibitions that restricted from time to time my use of a sofa and a bell with a string tied on to it as a tram were easily endured. They were much more easily endured than the prohibitions which prevent me now from doing a hundred and one things that I want to do.' The last third of the essay is devoted to mocking 'three old men' with whom Knox 'lunched recently'. 'They were all striving to be as jolly as schoolboys, and bantering each other with the jokes of childish days. They all danced nightly, patted tennis balls over nets, pranced when possible at the edge of the ocean foam, and strove in every way to imitate the example of their youngers and betters.' His companions were 'anxious about their waists', exercised and 'sipped tonic water'. He concedes that he 'may be exaggerating a little' when he states: 'One of them, so far as I remember, had to be hung every day by his feet from the ceiling, and there slowly turning round, puffing out his cheeks from time to time, and performing fantastic movements with his arms, recover the lithe grace of the nursery. Another was pickled in brine for one hour every morning, and wallowed one hour every evening in mud.' These men, Knox believes, have 'no consolations. Infancy over, the best of life is past. [.] Parenthood has thrown over its privileges, its pleasure in authority and control.' He concludes: 'I pity the young of to-day. | While there is yet time, cannot we begin to check them a little, to institute a campaign of "Stop, Bertie!" or "Hush, Angela!! When you grow up you can say or do things like that, but now you are only a child" - and then offer to Angela and Bertie some mild inducement to grow up at all? And at the same time, shall we not discover, those of us who have done it, some faint excuse for having grown up ourselves? | There should be a quid pro quo in childhood and age. Childhood is in any case, it seems to me, the happier condition.' From the E. V. Knox papers.

See Knox's entry in the Oxford DNB, along with those of his father and three brothers. The school was in existence in various places and under various names between 1914 and 1965. Four items, in good condition, lightly aged. ONE: Autograph Speech by Knox, headed 'BROOKFIELD SCHOOL'. Dated 19 July 1951. 3pp, 12mo. On three leaves held together with brass stud, with directions to the school on reverse of last leaf. Written in capital letters. Knox begins by noting the prizes: 'Difficult to think of anything else when one sees this table loaded with gifts. But before the Prizes, we have to consider the praises, and it is very right and proper that we should.' He makes two quotes before recalling the 'first day I went to school [.] though it wasn't severe, it was not very imaginative'. He notes 'the immense advance in system and ideas of education. Not cramming things into heads, but trying to get the best out of them. Training minds to think for themselves and characters to mould themselves in the best way they can. I think we live in a Golden Age of education in spite of all the difficulties of the times, especially in a school like this, in the greatest city in the world, with all its opportunities for education in Art, Drama and Places of Historical Interest.' He refers to the head mistress and 'diagrams and pictures', stating: 'Everything done to interest and stimulate the mind. | It wasn't so, once, I assure you'. Looking at the school he wishes he could go back to school himself, and 'learn things I never did learn. Not perhaps cookery and sewing but nature-study and drawing and better ways of learning history and geography and French'. TWO: 12mo letterhead for Knox's home in Hampstead (now bearing a blue plaque), on which is written in capitals: 'You must have pleasant memories of your school time and gratitude'. THREE: Programme for 'Brookfield Secondary School for Girls | Speech Day - 19th July, 1951'. Duplicated typescript including '6. DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES AND SPEECH by Mr. E. V. Knox'. Stapled into buff folder with crudely-printed design on front cover, including Festival of Britain motif, headed 'Brookfield Secondary School for Girls. Speech Day 1951.' FOUR: Another copy of the programme, this time inserted in a buff folder carrying a childish watercolour of a riverside vista, headed 'Brookfield Secondary Central School. Speech Day 1951.' From the E. V. Knox papers.

For information on Graves see the generous obituary of him in The Times, 18 April 1944. Both items in fair condition, lightly aged and worn, with minor staining from paperclip to first leaf of letter. The work was not published, and although Graves states in Item One that the greater part of the text is 'in the hands of my typist', there is no record of its survival, or of the thousand related documents he states were sent to him by M. H. Spielmann. ONE: ALS from 'C L. G.' to 'Dear Evoe'. 4pp., landscape 8vo. Having sent Knox a typescript of the first part of his book, Graves begins on the subject of Knox's memorandum, saying that he is 'sending in a separate envelope my notes on your questions and very helpful suggestions arising out of the first instalment'. He explains that he has been asked 'to undertake the book' by 'Phil', who 'made it clear that it should consist of only one volume' With reference to M. H. Spielmann's 'History of Punch', Graves reports that 'Phil' found that 'Spielmann's idea of incorporating in the work his own volume in a revised form was quite impracticable. Speilmann acquiesced and very handsomely handed over his book to be condensed in the introductory part of the new book, subject of course to due acknowledgment.' Spielmann has sent Graves 'an enormous quantity of material, which he has collected since his history of Punch was published in 1895, for a second edition of it. These have been arriving at intervals during the last few months and I calculate that they run to at least a 1000 documents, letters, newspaper cuttings, articles &c'. Having felt 'bound to go through them', Graves is 'at last emerging from the wilderness, having made extracts from and notes on the very small proportion that was of any real value.' The correspondence includes 'some letters from Burnand Furniss and that old bore Arthur-à-Beckett', but is 'mostly of an intimate and controversial character & quite unsuitable'. He praises Spielmann's 'instudstry ( 'No contributor to Punch however insignificant has escaped his notice'), but considers that, being a literary critic, he 'leaves much to be desired, giving as an example his 'admiration for Clement Scott's verses(!)'. Graves also feels that Spielmann's 'loyalty to his race has not unnaturally affected his judgment in dealing with Punch's attitude towards Jews'. Graves has nevertheless found 'a small residuum of interesting new matter, notably about Charles Keene ad his relation with Edward FitzGerald, and letters from Ansty Guthrie on his authors'.These matters have a bearing on Graves's 'primary preoccupation': 'the condensation of the work into one volume of normal size'. The book 'ought not to run to much more than 100,000 words', but 'drastic revision will be necessary', as he has 'already written nearly that on the period down to 1920', 'it is really a rather appalling job, but if my health remains as good as at present, I do not despair of bringing the record more or less up to date by the end of the year.' At Graves's age (81 or 82) 'one can't look far ahead'. He explains his 'scheme': 'to treat the progress of Punch in sections. The first deals with the Jerroldian régime democratic and humanitarian, the second with Punch's gradual move to the Right, while remaining a Reformer and an advocate of non-intervention. The third covers the long duel between Gladstone and Dizzy, Dizzy's imperial policy and his decline. The fourth covers the Victorian climax, culminating in the pageantry of the Jubilee of 1887, and the fifth treats of the passing of the Old Order and events which led up to the Great War.' He has written a shorter section on 'Punch in War Time, and there remains the Epilogue, or whatever it shall be called, on the aftermath of the Versailles Conference'. Each section 'opens with a review of High Politics as they are dealt with by Punch, and contains chapters on the other activities and interests, manners, fashions, art and sport &c.' He concludes the letter with a justification of his 'method', despite its 'drawbacks'. He hopes to 'send in the sections down to the end of the War by the end of the month; they are now in the hands of my typist'. TWO: 5pp, 8vo. Headed 'Notes on your Memorandum. | When you have found time to read them, would you kindly return them, as there are some passages that I may possibly want to refer to.' A closely-written draft, with deletions and emendations. Graves responds to comments by Knox on the first 87pp. of typescript of the work, with subjects including: Mark Lemon; the first Almanac; the Mark Twain dinner; Punch's attitude to 'Dizzy' ('Punch did not love Jews, but he was never an anti-Semite. Spielmann misrepresents him in this matter, and disregards Punch's consistent support, in its final stages, of the Jewish Disabilities Removal Bill.'); Punch a London paper; the Prince Consort; attacks on Foreign Sovereigns; the change of opinion in the Jerrold family; Thackeray and his political opinions; Leech's picture of "The Great Social Evil". There is also a long section headed: 'General Question of Punch's attitude to Popes, Roman Catholicism and Ritualism.'.

Long's obituary in the New York Times, 6 September 1998, describes her as 'war correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times who covered the London blitz and the Nuremburg trials' and 'one of only a few women who were correspondents in World War II'. She had joined the New York Herald Tribune's London bureau in 1941, and subsequently married Raymond Daniell, chief of the New York Times's London bureau, joining that newspaper as a reporter in February 1942. An interesting letter, indicating that the United States adopted the practice of queuing at a surprisingly recent date. 1p., 4to. In good condition, lightly aged. The letter begins: 'We're delighted to hear that you will write the article on "queues" for us. | Mr. Markel [i.e. Pulitzer Prize winning editor Lester Markel (1894-1977)] has naturally set no time limit by which the piece is wanted, but I know that he is eager to get it as soon as possible, in view of the sudden apparition of long queues on the domestic scene in the United States. Would two weeks suit you?' Markel has requested 'a humerous [sic] article on the general theme of queues', and Long notes that 'There certainly seems to have developed a "queue psychology" in Britain during the past couple of years a subject full of fascinating possibilities'. She refers to a recent Punch cartoon on the subject. She continues: 'I don't suppose queueing [sic] has gone quite as far in the United States yet, nor are we, as a nation quite as patient or polite about such things. Nevertheless, I'm told that in Washington, particularly, people have to queue up at the station for taxis just as here, and I've seen references to queuing in shops etc.' The final paragraph discusses the editorial arrangements.