Huysmans and the Fortune Press
There is a lot of confusion about the dates of editions published by the Fortune Press, partly because most of the firm’s titles didn’t include publication dates, and partly because the publisher often bound only a small number of copies at any one time, which means that the original printed sheets of an edition might appear in variant bindings produced decades apart, though all nominally belong to the same edition. In the case of the translations the Fortune Press published of Huysmans’ work things are even more confusing in that prefaces and introductions often contain dates that are not the actual date of publication. The most comprehensive list of publications by the Fortune Press is Timothy D’Arch Smith’s R. A. Caton and the Fortune Press (Bertram Rota, 1983; revised and expanded edition, Asphodel Editions, 2004. Additional information about Fortune Press editions, as well as other English translations of Huysmans’ work, can be found in Brian Banks’ The Image of Huysmans, AMS Press, 1990.) However, even D’Arch Smith’s dates can, in some instances, be improved on. It seems that he did not have access to the full run of the Bulletin de la Société Huysmans (1928 — present), which provides contemporary information about a number of Fortune Press editions that allow us to date their publications with more accuracy. This information seems fairly reliable given that it is often contemporaneous with the publication of the books themselves and that the translators of the later Fortune Press editions of Huysmans’ novels — Robert Baldick, Richard Griffiths and J. W. G. Sandiford-Pellé — were all members of the Society and probably supplied the Bulletin with information. Using this information, as well as that from a wide range of bibliographical sources, I have corrected publication dates where necessary, and noted the discrepancies with D’Arch Smith in the accompanying text. By including images of the cover, title page and last page of each edition, together with a list of distinguishing features and relevant bibliographical sources, I hope that some of the confusion over the dates of the various editions of Huysmans’ work that the Fortune Press produced in the course of its erratic career can be avoided. If anyone has any further information or corrections to the details listed here, I’d be grateful if they could contact me.
Marthe
London: Fortune Press, [1958].
Size: 5.25 x 7.75 inches
Pages: 82
Binding: Black
The first issue binding of this translation by Robert Baldick is much superior to later bindings. It was issued in a dustjacket that is now very difficult to find. The British Library catalogue gives the date of publication as 1958, as does the English Catalogue of Printed Books for 1960, covering the period 1956-1959, which gives an exact date of 27 August 1958, while the British National Bibliography gives a date of July 1958. However, the book is listed as appearing in 1957 in the Bulletin de la Société Huysmans, No. 35, which was published in July 1958. As Baldick was a member of the society it is likely that he provided them with the information, but whether this means that the book was due to be published in 1957 but was delayed, or that the Bulletin is in error is difficult to say. The Union Catalog gives a date of 1957, but qualifies it with a question-mark.
Living Together (En Ménage)
London: Fortune Press, 1969.
Size: 5 x 7.75 inches
Pages: 206
Binding: Red
The last of Huysmans’ books to be published by the Fortune Press was edited and translated by J. W. G. Sandiford-Pellé. This edition is unique among Fortune Press editions of Huysmans’ work in that it actually prints a publication date, however D’Arch Smith gives the date as "1969 (i.e. 1971)" though doesn’t explain what this means. Presumably the book was prepared and printed in 1969 just before Caton’s death but only actually published in 1971, during the two years when D’Arch Smith tried to keep the company going. In 1972 the Bulletin de la Société Huysmans, No. 59, describes the translation as ’recent’ so the later of the two dates is probably more accurate.
Parisian Sketches
London: Fortune Press, [1962].
Size: 5 x 7.75 inches
Pages: 88
Binding: Red
Translated by Richard Griffiths, with an introduction and notes. A dustjacket was produced, but it is more commonly seen without. The publication date, although not given in the book itself is confirmed by a notice in the Bulletin de la Société Huysmans, No. 44 of 1962 and a review by Henry Lefai in the subsequent Bulletin for 1963, No. 45.
Downstream
London: Fortune Press, [1952].
Size: 5.5 x 8.5 inches
Pages: 48
Binding: Red
Translated by Robert Baldick, this translation includes a short afterword which is dated 1952. Although the date of publication is given as 1956 in the British Library catalogue and by D’Arch Smith, the book is listed in the Bulletin de la Société J.-K. Huysmans No. 25, covering the first half of 1953, which gives full bibliographic details including a publication date of 1952. The edition is also dated 1952 in the bibliography of the Revue d’histoire littéraire de France for 1953. The book is distinguished by a striking etching as a frontispiece, which is unique in Fortune Press editions of Huysmans’ work and also by the fact that the publisher’s address is given as Jermyn Street, even though books issued before and after list the 15 Belgrave Road address.
Against the Grain: First edition
Against the Grain
London: Fortune Press, [1931].
Size: 6 x 8.625 inches
Pages: 299
Binding: Black
The first edition of this anonymous translation was produced from the leftover sheets of a limited edition (number unstated) printed and published in France by Groves & Michaux in 1926. Accounts differ as to the sequence of events that led to this publishing deal. According to D’Arch Smith a list of Groves & Michaux’s stock was prepared for Caton in December 1930, persumably at Caton’s instigation, and in March of the following year he bought shares in, and became a director of, the publishing-house-come-bookshop that specialised in selling under-the-counter literary erotica. Whether it was this deal which allowed him to import the remaining sheets of the French edition and to produce the Fortune Press edition with minimal extra printing (only the title page and the publisher’s note are different), or whether he bought the leftover sheets outright as he did with Down There a year earlier, is unclear. However, another version of events is given by Peter Mendes in Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800-1930 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), which states that in 1930 Jean Michaux decided that he wanted to legally dissolve his business partnership with Groves, and that it was for this reason that a stocklist was prepared. In this scenario, Caton, who most probably knew of the firm’s activities beforehand, simply capitalised on the firm’s imminent break-up to acquire some new stock.
As far as Against the Grain is concerned, the fact that the Groves & Michaux edition had been on sale in France since 1926 probably accounts for the small size of the Fortune Press edition, which is given as 250. Interestingly the new pages in the Fortune Press edition are printed on the same paper as the original — which is also the case for their edition of Down There — so it seems likely that the new pages for both books were printed by the original French printer. The English Catalogue of Printed Books for 1936 — covering the period between 1931 and 1935 — lists the publication date of Against the Grain as June 1931. The copy held at the British Library confirms this with an accession date stamp of 20 August 1931. A short article in the Huysmans society Bulletin for December 1934 (No. 11) — under the heading ’Le livre qu’aimait Dorian Gray’, a French rendering of the wording on the cover of the Fortune Press edition of Against the Grain — announces the publication on 21 October 1933, ’en Angleterre, de deux traductions de romans de J.-K Huysmans’ — a fairly clear reference to the Fortune Press first editions of both Down There and Against the Grain. It is almost certain that this slightly misleading bibliographical information came from Montague Summers, as the same issue of the Bulletin also contains a note stating that an English member of the society has informed them that an edition of Down There has just been suppressed by the police. Summers’ reason for making this belated publication announcement was possibly an attempt to stir up support for the Fortune Press by stressing the publisher’s literary credentials. The list of books published by the Fortune Press on the back of the dustjacket of Against the Grain includes Down There, which was published — or at least produced — the year before in 1930.
Against the Grain: Second edition
Against the Grain
London: Fortune Press, [c.1937].
Size: 5.25 x 7.75 inches
Pages: 219
Bindings: Red, Black, Orange
The second edition of this anonymous translation was produced in a limited edition — or perhaps editions — of 1000, sometimes numbered by a stamp and sometimes numbered by hand. The Buckingham Palace Road address on the title page confirms that it must have been produced prior to 1943, and the fact that there are copies in existence with accession dates from 1940 and 1941 indicate that the book was produced sometime in the 1930s. The list of other Fortune Press titles on the back of the dustjacket includes a number of titles published in 1936 as well as Bicycle Belle by Richard Blake Brown which probably appeared in 1937, so it is possible the book appeared slightly later than the date (c.1936) given in D’Arch Smith.
Against the Grain: Third edition
À Rebours (Against the Grain)
London: Fortune Press, [c.1948].
Size: 5.25 x 7.75 inches
Pages: 180
Bindings: Black
The third edition of this anonymous translation is distinguishable by a number of factors: it is printed on thinner, lower quality paper, it includes an introduction by P G Lloyd dated 1946, it has been completely reset and now has 180 pages instead of 219, and the address on the title page reads 15 Belgrave Road, SW1. Although the dustjacket gives the English title, the spine on the binding reads À Rebours, and the title page gives the title as À Rebours (Against the Grain). Despite the date in the introduction, the list of other Fortune Press titles on the back of the dustjacket includes a number of titles published in 1947 and 1948, so a later date than that given by D’Arch Smith (c.1946) is possible.
Down There (First edition)
Down There
London: Fortune Press, [1930].
Size: 6.25 x 8.75 inches
Pages: 387
Bindings: Black
The lack of contemporary bibliographical information concerning the first edition of Down There — the English Catalogue of Printed Books makes no reference to it, though it lists the publication date of Against the Grain a year later — makes trying to untangle the book’s confusing publication history quite difficult. Like Against the Grain, the first edition of Down There is comprised of the sheets from the Groves & Michaux edition with a new title page and justification page (again on matching paper so presumably also printed in France). The confusion in the case of Down There however stems from the fact that the Groves & Michaux edition had itself only just been ’published’ and advertised for sale in 1930. The copy of the Groves & Michaux edition of Down There held by the Bibliothèque nationale has an accession date of 5 June 1930, for example, while the copy of the Fortune Press edition held by the British Library — composed from the same sheets as the French edition — has an accession date stamp only three weeks later, of 21 June 1930. Accounts differ as to the sequence of events leading up to the Fortune Press editions of Down There and Against the Grain (see the entry for the first edition of Against the Grain for more detail), but it would appear that if Peter Mendes is correct and that Michaux dissolved his partnership with Frank Groves in 1930 this would account for why the French edition of Down There appears never to have actually been put on sale, despite its legal deposition in the Bibliothèque nationale and the Bibliothéque de l’Arsenal in Paris. Interestingly, neither of the legal deposit copies of the Groves & Michaux edition have printed covers. The decision to sell the whole print run to Caton would have made sense at this point, therefore, given the French firm’s uncertain future. In any event, Caton must have stepped in with an offer to purchase the sheets in 1930, from which he then produced his own edition, which, like the originally stated print run for the Groves & Michaux edition, is comprised of a nominal 2,000 copies plus 50 delux copies on antique laid paper.
Strangely, as if there were not enough uncertainty in Down There’s production history, copies of the Groves & Michaux were advertised for sale in the Bulletin de la Société Huysmans two years later, in October 1932. A possible source for this information might have been Pierre Dufay, a member of the Society who had worked for Charles Carrington’s bookshop (the stock of which was bought by Groves & Michaux after Carrington’s death). Dufay would have known Michaux, who had also worked for Carrington in the 1920s. Whether the book’s listing was simply a late notification of the proposed Groves & Michaux edition or a mistaken reference to the Fortune Press edition, which was most likley on sale through the Groves & Michaux bookshop, Librairie du Palais Royal, is unclear.
The Bulletin de la Société Huysmans for December 1934 (No. 11) contains a short notice about a letter received ’from an English member of the society’ — i.e. Montague Summers — informing them that an edition of Down There has been suppressed by the police. Although Down There was one of the books confiscated by the police raid on the Fortune Press in September 1934 — on suspicion of producing obscene literature — it seems as if the prosecution was at least originally aimed at other publications. However, given the fact that the Fortune Press doesn’t seem to have ever got the confiscated copies back and that the second edition of Down There (which reverts to the French title) was bowdlerized, it seems that Caton clearly believed he would be prosecuted again if he produced another edition of Down There in its original form. There is no evidence that Summers had anything to do with this edition of Down There, though it is possible he acted as some kind of advisor during its production. Interestingly in an article he wrote about Huysmans and Dickens in 1946 he refers to Huysmans as ’Jorris Karl’ — the erroneous spelling of Huysmans’ name that appears on the covers of both Down There and Against the Grain. In this, Summers was reproducing Huysmans’ own error in the publication of his first book, Drageoir à épices in which he mistakenly spelled the Germanic form of his first name with two Rs, though he corrected the spelling for all subsequent editions of his work. Summers did, however, contribute to the bibliography and notes icnluded in the subsequent bowdlerised versions of Là-bas which the Fortune Press put out in 1946 and 1952.
Given the fact that the first edition is a pretty sumptuous affair — ’mould-made paper’, buckram boards, gilt top edge and so on — it is possible that Caton only bound up copies to meet demand. This, combined with the early suppression of the book, probably accounts for its relative scarcity, for despite the nominal size of the edition, it is much harder to find than the first edition of Against the Grain, which appeared in an edition of only 250 copies. The translator of Down There is not named in either the Groves & Michaux edition — where the title page states only that it is ’Translated by an Oxford MA’ — or the Fortune Press edition, which doesn’t mention a translator at all. However, it is fairly certain that the translator was Alfred Allinson. Both the Groves & Michaux and Fortune Press editions contain a préface written by Huysmans’ literary executor, Lucien Descaves, which was translated into English by Frank Groves. Descaves submitted his preface as a dactylograph copy, rather than handwritten, saying that otherwise the publishers would have sold it as an autographed manuscript to collectors. The preface didn’t appear in any of the subsequent editions.
Là-bas (Down There: Second edition)
Là-bas
London: Fortune Press, [1946].
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Pages: 216
Bindings: Black, Brown, Red, Orange
The second edition of Alfred Allinson’s translation was produced immediately after the war. Notable for the reversion to the French title, it has also been expurgated, probably to avoid a recurrence of the prosecution for obscenity of 1934. It is usually printed on thin, poor quality paper and in a larger format than the other later editions of Huysmans’ work. The book includes an unsigned preface, dated 1943, and notes by Alan Hull Watson, and a bibliography compiled by ’a member of the Société Huysmans’ i.e. Montague Summers. Although Montague Summers claimed to have been ’the only English member’ of the society — a claim that is often repeated by those writing about him — a simple check with the list of members periodically published by the Huysmans society itself shows that he was neither the only English member, nor was he a member of the society for very long — at most four years. His name is recorded among the list of members in Bulletin No. 11 (December 1934), but not in that of No. 7 (October 1932), nor that of No. 14 (May 1936), or indeed in any subsequent list, so he was no longer a member of the society at the time of the book’s publication. Interestingly the most recent book listed in either the bibliography or the notes is 1938, so it is conceivable that the book was underway before the war, but its publication delayed because of it. The address on the title page gives just SW1, so it is also possible that it was produced during a period of transition between addresses. The third edition of Against the Grain, which most likely dates from 1948 has the 21 Belgrave Road address, so it is probable the book was printed after 1943 when the Fortune Press left Buckingham Palace Road and before 1946, when it moved (more or less) permanently to Belgrave Road. Some copies, presumably from a later impression, have a title page that includes the 21 Belgrave Road address.
Là-bas (Down There: Third edition)
Là-bas
London: Fortune Press, [1952].
Size: 5.5 x 7.75 inches
Pages: 230
Bindings: Grey, Black
The third edition of Alfred Allinson’s translation is a smaller, reset version of the second edition, which now has 230 pages instead of 216. The date of 1943 is omitted from the preface and the bibliography at the back now lists Downstream, which was published in 1952, a notice of which also appears on the back dustjacket.