Apocalypse in England
A Critical Study of
Frederick Carter
Richard Grenville Clark
Introduction by Phil Baker
We are pleased to announce our
new title for exclusive pre-orders…
“Monographs on forgotten artists are important things, and in an increasingly mainstream world they are becoming too rare. It is valuable to rescue seemingly minor artists, especially when they are as good – and, in various ways, as revealing of their era – as Frederick Carter.” – Phil Baker’s Introduction
Finally the life-story of a neglected and fascinating artist who mixed with key figures of the British Occult and Decadent milieu can be told…
Up until now the mystical quester Frederick Carter has been merely a footnote in other biographies, notably those of Austin Osman Spare and Arthur Machen who he knew and worked with. Carter’s oeuvre was formed by a plurality of influences and interactions extending to the occult, philosophy, and religion. Now he moves centre-stage to have his story told and his achievements accessed.
With unprecedented access to the artist/writer’s rich personal archive of diaries, memoirs, sketchbooks, and artworks, the author guides us on a picaresque journey from Carter’s beginnings in Yorkshire, through the ateliers and red-light district of Paris with Holbrook Jackson and George Raffalovich, to the esoteric London circles of Bohemian artists, writers, publishers and intellectuals.
This book is unique in providing many colourful firsthand close-up encounters with charismatic figures previously known from afar. Notably, a dinner party with Crowley which ends in a venomous spat between the Beast and his jilted lover. A visit to Spare to meet W.H. Davies. A drug-experiment with Raffalovich and Carter’s life-model girlfriend…
Carter is witness and perceptive accomplish as he works with Spare on Form magazine and develops the manifesto for Automatic Drawing. He also became part of the Redondan clique, and mixed with W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, John Gawsworth, Thomas Burke, and Henry Miller. His range was truly polymathic and his long, uneven career forced him to engage with many of the major events of the early twentieth century, its characteristic problems, his place in Bohemia, its artists and intellectuals.
Richly-illustrated throughout with unpublished examples of Carter’s exquisite line-drawings, etchings of London, and mystical woodcuts. Alongside character portraits of Wyndham Lewis, Machen, Lawrence are set his portrait studies of them.
“His images resonated and danced across a range of genres… this book presents us with a new perspective on a figure who has hitherto been seen as marginal to cultural debates of the period, and shows him to be of central significance.” – Richard Grenville Clark
Contents include – Biographical section and contextual history • WWI political cartoons • Gladiators of the Mind • The Cosmic Highway • The Game of Destiny project • A cross-section of prints from the grotesque re-workings of the Commedia dell’Arte to mystical woodcuts conjuring with Revelation and Zodiacal symbolism • Appendix – Carter’s mystical concepts, unpublished poetry, automatic drawing essay and review, rare and unpublished art and mystical articles…
DELUXE EDITION Strict limitation of 90 copies. 3 COPIES LEFT!
175x232mm, pp.380. Litho, sewn, colour-plate section, frontispiece, signature page, hand-numbered on colophon. Hand-marbled endpapers, tailbands, foil-blocked and quarter-bound in leather, slipcased, and tipped-in on front with sink-plate a Carter woodcut design. Illustrated dustjacket. Over 300 black & white images. Inserts include a facsimile of Carter’s ex-libris, signed by the author.
• The deluxe edition features an exclusive facsimile of the typescript – Cocktails at Crowley’s
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STANDARD EDITION 400 copies.
175x232mm, pp.380. Litho, sewn, colour-plate section, hand-numbered, illustrated endpapers, tailbands, foil-blocked boards and sine, illustrated dustjacket. Over 300 black & white images. Inserts include a facsimile of Carter’s ex-libris, signed by the author.
Post to UK –
Post to Europe –
Post to USA \ Rest of World –
Following volumes in this series will feature Carter’s collected short stories, mystical writings, and collected artworks.
Author of The Dragon of the Alchemists (1926), The Dragon of Revelation (1931), D.H. Lawrence and the Body Mystical (1932), this is the first in a series bringing Carter’s wide ranging art and writings to a wider recognition, and definitive, critical light.
