Coppard, A. E. — The Gollan — Privately Printed Christmas Edition, 1929

Author: Alfred Edgar Coppard (1878–1957)
Title: The Gollan
Privately printed for: Earl and Florence Fisk
Date: Christmas 1929
Edition: First separate edition
Limitation: 75 copies printed; only 10 copies offered for sale
Format: 12mo
Pagination: 13 pp. plus checklist
Binding: Original green wrappers with printed paper title label
Provenance: H. B. Collamore, Hartford, Connecticut, with accompanying signed letter from Harold I. Mason of the Centaur Book Shop, Philadelphia, dated 30 December 1929
Stock Code: 004201
Location: Bookroom

First separate edition of this exceptionally scarce privately printed short story by A. E. Coppard, produced at Christmas 1929 for the friends of Earl and Florence Fisk. The title page states explicitly that the work was “Printed, Not Published”, and bibliographical sources confirm a total edition of only 75 copies.

This copy is especially desirable because its original distribution history is preserved in the accompanying letter from Harold I. Mason of the Centaur Book Shop, Philadelphia, dated 30 December 1929 and addressed to H. B. Collamore of Hartford, Connecticut. Mason explains that only seventy-five copies were printed, that just ten were offered for sale, and that Earl Fisk supplied the Centaur Book Shop with two of those ten sale copies. He further states that the story had been written especially for Fisk and that it was not intended to be reprinted, offering this copy to Collamore at the contemporary price of $15.

That letter therefore establishes something much more specific than the general limitation: this is one of the tiny sub-group of only ten copies originally intended for commercial sale, rather than one of the sixty-five presentation or Christmas-gift copies.

The recipient was almost certainly Harry Bacon Collamore (1891–1975) of Hartford, a noted American book collector and later trustee and benefactor of a number of academic and cultural institutions, including the Watkinson Library at Trinity College and Colby College. His collecting interests included British and American literature, making the survival of this copy with its original bookseller’s letter especially appropriate.

The Story

The Gollan is one of Coppard’s characteristic supernatural or folkloric tales. Its central figure, the Gollan, encounters a leprechaun and acquires the gift of becoming imperceptible to others except when asleep. What initially appears to be an enviable freedom quickly becomes a burden: his strange invisibility isolates him from ordinary human life, and attempts to improve his condition by exchanging senses with animals only make matters worse. Eventually he abandons these experiments and returns to his former state.

The story combines Irish folkloric motifs, fantasy and moral fable, using the Gollan’s apparently advantageous supernatural gift to explore the unforeseen disadvantages of escaping normal human limitations. Coppard later included the story in his 1931 collection Nixey’s Harlequin, but this 1929 private printing is its first separate appearance.

Earl Fisk and Coppard

Earl E. Fisk was an important supporter of Coppard’s work in the United States. Contemporary scholarship records that Fisk’s advocacy later helped secure greater American recognition for Coppard and encouraged Alfred A. Knopf to publish a number of his works. The Gollan occupies an interesting place in that relationship, having been written specifically for Fisk and then privately printed by Earl and Florence Fisk as a Christmas keepsake.

The accompanying Centaur Book Shop letter is therefore not merely incidental provenance: it documents the original marketing and distribution of one of Coppard’s smallest editions, providing contemporary evidence for the exact limitation and the extraordinary fact that only ten copies were commercially offered.

Condition

Original green wrappers with printed paper label to upper cover. Wrappers very slightly rubbed and marked, but otherwise very well preserved. Internally the pages are very nice and clean. The original bookseller’s letter is also well preserved.

Very good indeed.

Now housed in an easily removable clear acetate cover.

A particularly strong copy of one of Coppard’s scarcest separately printed works, distinguished by its documented status as one of only ten sale copies from an edition of seventy-five, together with contemporary bookseller correspondence establishing its distribution and original price.

Stock code: 004201. Location: Bookroom.

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