Manuscript notes on Satire.

Bookseller Notes

Reflections on satire by one of its pre-eminent twentieth-century exponents, E.V. Knox, 'Evoe' of Punch magazine, consisting in the main of notes towards an essay: it is headed first with the title of John Oldham's 'a "Satyr" addressed to a friend', and then 'Notes for "Satire"' suggesting an essay on his profession and, although the notes are a little too diffuse to have a clear conception of the work at hand, they are nevertheless compelling. Names are reeled off alongside apposite quotes: Aristophanes, Horace, John Oldham, Samuel Butler; notes on Dryden, Swift, Cervantes, Pope, Skelton, T.S. Eliot, Sydney Smith, Juvenal, et al.; reading lists appear, with some names emphasised, followed by an aphoristic section of 'Notes on the Mode'. In a couple of passages, barely legible, we sense there might be some original verse being worked-up, and sure enough, towards the rear there is a seemingly unpublished poem drafted at length perhaps in full, though the signature at the end appears to relate to a separate stanza, Facing the poem, called 'Blurb' and concerning a literary darling, is an illustration that relates to the 'abominable snowman' mentioned at the end. A list of names at the rear, possibly in preparation for some sort of memoir, includes Sylvia Lynd, an anecdote regarding one of whose parties is set down in brief form beside 'The stuttering Irishman, now a radio-television star [...] told an anecdote about a gorilla'. At the back, inverse to the rest of the contents, there is a just-over-2pp. transcription of passages from G.W. Potter's 'Random Recollections of Hampstead'.