All this and Bevin too

A$250 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

With drawings by Mervyn Peake. London : Nicholson Watson, 1943. First edition. Octavo, illustrated wrappers (small hole to upper panel, extending to a couple of leaves, lightly marked), pp. 28, illustrated by Peake. A very good copy. A satirical tract on enlistment into the military by English raconteur and queer icon Quentin Crisp. The narrative follows an enthusiastic kangaroo who tries to voluntarily enrol in the army but is subjected to a series of absurd, bureaucratic tests. The title itself is a clever play on the popular 1940 novel All This, and Heaven Too (and its contemporary phrase) combined with the name of Ernest Bevin, who served as the British Minister of Labour and National Service during WWII. Crisp tried to enrol in the English Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, but was rejected and declared exempt by the medical board on the grounds that they were suffering from sexual perversion . The artist Mervyn Peake had applied to become a war artist however his application was rejected. He was conscripted into the Army, where he served first with the Royal Artillery, then with the Royal Engineers. After repeated requests to transfer to become a war artist, which were consistently refused, he suffered a nervous breakdown in April 1942, and was sent to Southport Hospital. They years 1943 1948 were some of Peake s most productive, and include this example, illustrating his fellow rejectee Crisp s satirical words, is a biting criticism of the bureaucracy of the

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.