Tales of the Thames

Author: Maxwell, W. B. (William Babington) 1866-1938
Title: Tales of the Thames
Publication: London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1892
Edition: First printing

Description: Paperback. First printing of author's first publication, 1892. 8vo, bound in olive green pictorial wraps, 206 pp. VG copy with light wear to covers, contents VG but seemingly a trial binding or possibly proof copy; pages have been folded and inserted but signatures are not sewn at their folds. RARE book with only 4 copies on OCLC. From the Oxford Companion to Edwardian Literature: Maxwell (1866-1938) married Sydney Brabazon Moore. He was one of the five illegitimate children of M. E. Braddon, and her publisher, John Maxwell, who married her in 1874, after the death of his first wife. He was brought up in Richmond, Middlesex, with the five children of his father's first marriage. As a boy of 14 he persuaded his parents to let him leave his day school in Richmond and train as a painter at the school run by George Calderon's father in St John's Wood, London. He was given by his father the annual The Mistletoe Bough on his twenty-first birthday. His mother was editor and contributed a story to each issue, but the format was old-fashioned and the annual was soon abandoned. He acted as his mother's secretary and manager after his father's death, and went on living in her house in Richmond after his marriage, although his wife and her mother-in-law are supposed to have had domestic disagreements. During the First World War, in which he fought on the Western Front, his mother died, and afterwards they moved to London, where Maxwell became Chairman of the Society of Authors, Chairman of the National Book Council, a member of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, and of the Committee of the Royal Literary Fund. His first publication in volume form was Tales of the Thames (1892); the second, The Countess of Maybury (1901), a collection of sketches in the manner of ‘Anthony Hope', originally contributed to the World. At first, his Edwardian publications continued in the same vein of lightweight satire of London society: the title of two collections of short stories, Fabulous Fancies (1903) and Odd Lengths (1907), are indicative. The Ragged Messenger (1904) contrasts West End and East End by allowing a philanthropist to come into an immense fortune. Thereafter, however, sexual obsession and betrayal became his main theme. In The Guarded Flame (1906), erotic passion disrupts the sober working lives of an ageing rationalist philosopher, his young wife, his even younger niece, and his secretary. In The Rest Cure (1910) John Barnard, a self-made man, marries Lady Edith Morville, but neglects her shamefully. She has an affair, and an illegitimate child, which dies. Meanwhile, he breaks down from overwork. Grace Fielding, his managing clerk, who adores him, informs his wife, who returns remorsefully to find him a changed man. He forgives her on his deathbed. Maxwell's most sensational novel in this vein, The Devil's Garden (1913), caused quite a stir. But his output was reasonably varied. Seymour Charlton (1909) is a rambling, Thackerayan story about a younger son who unexpectedly inherits a title, a fortune and a political career, but only after he has engaged himself to the daughter of a disreputable furniture dealer. It encompasses three distinct social groups: the hero's political chiefs and associates; his wife's impossible relations; and a coterie of swindling businessmen who use him as the titled figurehead for their company-promoting schemes. General Mallock's Shadow (1912), by contrast, is a Four Feathers-style tale about a general in the Indian army who is wrongly accused of cowardice and retires in disgrace to Yorkshire, where he lives with his two daughters, and eventually redeems himself in the eyes of the world when his house is attacked by starving strikers and he organizes stout resistance. After a slow start, Maxwell became very prolific; he published a gossipy autobiography, Time Gathered (1937). Like his brother Gerald Maxwell, he was a Freemason. Very Good.

Seller ID: C000013128

Subject: Literature