The Waste Paper Basket: A Collaborative Circulating Literary & Artistic Victorian Manuscript Magazine Vols V. & VII.

Two volumes, V. & VII., approximately 170 & 245 leaves respectively, prose and verse generally occupying both sides of paper, with art and photographs utilising one side only and a few interleaving blanks, a mixture of various paper types and coloured card. Both volumes are bound in hard wearing yellowish off-white cloth, lettered in gilt to the front boards, by T. Vickers Wood, a London Bookbinder. The bindings are firm, the cloth is quite toned and heavily marked and the corners and spine ends are bumped. The text blocks are slightly marked, with the paper toned to varying degrees depending upon its quality. The Waste Paper Basket (W. P. B. for short) seems to have been quite a sophisticated high-society magazine, circulating between a well-connected group of literary and artistic types, the majority of them published, containing short stories, verse, pen & ink and watercolour sketches, and photography. It was clearly influenced to a degree by The Yellow Book in terms of style and content, though the contributors are on the whole a rather less daring & risqué set. The two talented sisters, Sybil & Maud feature largely and seem to be the driving force behind the magazine, with contributions both literary and artistic. Maud appears at least 14 times with short stories, verse and a watercolour titled: "When love is young", her favoured subject matters being love, romance, passion and the best manner of conducting satisfactory relations between the sexes. Sybil is the more talented artist, often providing illustrations and decorative title pages for other contributors, in addition to several series of watercolour sketches, including one devoted to cricket poses, several short stories, some with a supernatural aspect, and some verse, all illustrated. Both sisters published novels and Maud wrote several biographies. Other notable contributors include: Mostyn T. Pigott (1865-1927), the writer, barrister, editor and clubman, who provided some humorous verse for both volumes, and the Scottish artist Max Cowper (1860-1911), famous as an illustrator for The Strand and Black and White Magazines, in the form of an original pen & wash drawing to volume VII. Leila Evelyn Gough-Calthorpe (1871-1956) submitted two short stories, a ghost story about two liberated, unchaperoned wealthy young sisters who rent a beautiful, isolated and suspiciously cheap house, and a romance. There are two short stories by the author C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne (of Captain Kettle fame), who is included on the list of members with his address, though these note "copied" and do not appear to be in his hand. The names and addresses of contributing members of the collective are included at the start of each volume in their order of circulation, and to the rear of each is a list of those who have contributed. There was a craze for collaborative magazines in wealthy and aristocratic circles during the Victorian period, often among the children of a family, emulating the proliferation of magazines that flourished as paper and printing became cheaper and more accessible. This magazine, compiled by a group in their 20s and 30s, most of whom were already or soon to be published, is a particularly fine example of the genre.…