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['Rat Week by Osbert Sitwell': Mimeographed typescript of the unexpurgated version of Osbert Sitwell's satirical poem about the abdication of King Edward VIII]
[SITWELL, Osbert]; [King Edward VIII/ & Mrs Wallis SIMPSON]; [CALVACADE]
Published by Privately (re)produced, 1936
- Softcover
Seller: Quair Books PBFA, Leeds, United KingdomQuair Books PBFA
Contact seller5-star sellerAssociation member: PBFA
Condition: Used
US$ 243.63
US$ 29.06 shippingShips from United Kingdom to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketMimeographed typescript. Thin, white paper (25.5 x 20.2cm), pp. 3, titled "RAT WEEK by Osbert Sitwell" and comprising 56 lines of mimeographed black type in eight stanzas, printed on one-side only, final page detached, rusty staple to top left corners, rust echo to bottom of pages, toned, a few fox spots, two-folds, some creasin…g at central fold. Else, clean. Very good An unusual, mimeographed copy of the unexpurgated version of Osbert Sitwell's "doggerel polemic Rat Week," his satirical poem about the abdication of King Edward VIII, which denounced "the [once] gay, courageous pirate crew" of the monarch's (apparent) friends; he named Lady Mendl, Lady Colefax, and the fashion editor Johnny McMullen, who Sitwell considered treacherous sycophants. Sitwell knew that publication would likely lead to libel action, "but he could not resist having a few copies made and distributed to his closer cronies; Mrs Greville, Lady Aberconway, Lady Cholmondley and Philip Frere among them. They showed it to their closer friends, copies were made, word of it passed around, soon it was known to everyone who was anyone in London." (Ziegler, 1999). Retrospectively (and with some glee, it seems), Sitwell likened the spread and popularity of the poem to "an eighteenth-century ballad" and claimed: "little did I know that it had multiplied and taken to itself wings, that it was being declaimed in drawing-rooms and saloon-bars and the public rooms of hotels, and that strangers were handing garbled versions of it to one another, later to be read aloud in crowded omnibuses or over the subterranean roar of the tube-trains." (Sitwell, 1986). It received further attention when the editor of the weekly magazine Cavalcade published an expurgated version of 'Rat Week' the following year; Sitwell took legal action, demanding damages for breach of copyright, an apology, and the withdrawal of all unsold copies of the issue. The magazine eventually settled out of court for £500. A likely contemporary, but "garbled version" (at least compared with the version published in Sitwell's 1986 account of the debacle, Rat week: An essay on the abdication: it differs in stanza number, capitalisation, use of commas and semicolons, and includes an extra word to line 2 of the penultimate verse), with no indication of the agent of reproduction, and twice identifies Sitwell as its author (at its head and foot). Osbert Sitwell (1986) Rat week: An essay on the abdication (London: Michael Joseph); Philip Ziegler (1999) Osbert Sitwell: A biography (London: Pimlico).
