Description
Cammell, Charles Richard
Richards Press, London, 1951. Hardcover. First Edition. A remarkably intact, attractive and collectable early first edition of this biography of Aleister Crowley. Previous owners name and date written neatly on first blank. Dust-jacket a little tanned and rubbed with a few of microscopic cracks. Very Good in Very Good unclipped mylar protected dust-jacket.
This bold, intimate, unprejudiced study of an extraordinary personality is written by a distinguished man of letters who knew him well – not as most of those who knew him, in the relation of a disciple to a master or of a seeker after sensation, but as one poet, one author, one neighbour, knows another.
Mr. Cammell observed Crowley at close quarters for five years (1936-1941) and has some remarkable things to say of him. He insists on Crowley’s position as a great lyric poet. He sees him as an original and powerful thinker unbalanced by the effects of a pitiful childhood and a tragic love, morally and materially ruined by a life-long addiction to the study of Magic.
But Aleister Crowley was a man of action as well as a man of vast and varied learning, and he achieved world fame as a mountaineer. There is, too, a lighter side to this book: intimate pictures of Crowley en pantoufles, anecdotes of his wit, humour and humanity, his eccentricities and stoicism.
This is a personal memoir, a work of observation, analysis and appraisement of a man of undeniable and extraordinary genius. Some other remarkable personalities connected with Crowley, are also graphically portrayed.
