Love is Less Than God. The Book of the Soul.
New York: The Sunwise Turn, 1923. First edition. New York: The Sun-wise Turn, 1923. First edition. 8vo, 42 pp, bound in marbled paper over boards backed in blue cloth titled in gilt. One of the 100 copies numbered and signed by the author, out of a total stated edition of 1000 copies.
An unusual occult work of numerology, published in the year that Cannan had his final mental breakdown and entered Priory Hospital, and subsequently, Holloway Sanitarium, where he would spend the remainder of his life. Cannan was once the secretary to J. M. Barrie, and Cannan married Mary Ansell following her high profile divorce with Barrie in 1910. Cannan was a pacifist and conscientous objector during the war, and suffered a mental breakdown in 1916, which he chronicled in his work The Release of the Soul.
Tho book was published by the Sunwise Turn, the bookshop and art gallery started by Madge Jenison and Mary Mowbray-Clarke, which was one of the first woman-owned bookshops in the US. This book was published from the bookshop’s second location, in the Yale Club building across from Grand Central, where a young Peggy Guggenheim was for awhile a volunteer - Guggenheim credited the shop, and particularly Mowbray-Clark’s influence, with inspiring her to collect art.
A late publication by the shop. Despite the large stated edition, the book is very scarce in the trade. OCLC locates 15 holdings.
Fine. Item #30665
Price: $300.00