Haldane, Richard Burdon & Murray, Gilbert — The Academic Committee: Inaugural Address / Eulogy on Samuel Henry Butcher — Edmund Gosse’s Presentation Copy, 1911

Corporate Author: Royal Society of Literature, Academic Committee
Contributors: Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane; Professor Gilbert Murray
Title: The Academic Committee. Inaugural Address by the Viscount Haldane of Cloan. Eulogy on Samuel Henry Butcher by Professor Gilbert Murray
Publisher: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, Amen Corner, London
Date: 1911
Edition: First edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: 26 pp.
Provenance: Sir Edmund Gosse’s copy, with his bookplate to the front pastedown and presentation inscription from Haldane to Gosse on the front free endpaper
Binding: Later, but not modern, burgundy cloth, gilt-lettered spine
Stock Code: 004203
Location: Bookroom

First edition of the inaugural publication of the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature, comprising the inaugural address by Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, together with Professor Gilbert Murray’s eulogy on Samuel Henry Butcher. Published by Henry Frowde for Oxford University Press in 1911, the work is bibliographically confirmed in the contemporary OUP catalogue as an octavo of 26 pages, priced one shilling net.

This copy has an exceptionally appropriate association: it belonged to Sir Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), whose bookplate is present on the front pastedown, and is inscribed on the facing endpaper “Edmund Gosse from Haldane”. This is therefore not merely a copy owned by one of the Committee’s members, but a presentation copy exchanged between two of the men principally responsible for the creation of the Academic Committee itself.

Haldane and Gosse worked together to establish the Committee within the Royal Society of Literature as an attempt to create something approaching a British equivalent of the Académie Française. Haldane’s modern biographer specifically records that the two men collaborated in its formation and that literature formed an important part of their long friendship. Contemporary reporting described the Committee as a body intended to maintain standards in the English language and literary style, encourage cooperation among serious writers, deliver commemorative and reception addresses, and make literary awards.

The membership list printed in the present volume is remarkable. Alongside Haldane and Gosse appear many of the dominant figures of British and Anglo-American literary culture, including Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Robert Bridges, Alfred Austin, James George Frazer, Andrew Lang, George Wyndham and W. B. Yeats. The Committee represented an unusually concentrated gathering of literary authority in Edwardian Britain.

The publication also marks the formal beginning of the Committee’s public activity. Haldane’s inaugural address set out the intellectual purpose of the body, while Gilbert Murray’s address commemorated the recently deceased classicist and politician Samuel Henry Butcher (1850–1910), himself one of the original members. The Committee subsequently issued further reception and commemorative addresses, including publications involving J. M. Barrie, Edmund Gosse, W. B. Yeats, John Masefield and others. The OUP catalogue of 1916 continued to list the present volume alongside these later proceedings.

The Gosse provenance significantly strengthens the copy. Gosse was not a peripheral participant: he was one of the Committee’s founders and appears among the membership printed in the volume. The presentation from Haldane therefore directly links author, recipient and institutional subject, making this an unusually coherent association copy.

Bound in later but not modern burgundy cloth, with gilt lettering to the spine. The binding is firm and presents well. The pages are generally very nice and clean. There is some age-related spotting and marking to the endpapers and binding, but the text remains fresh. Very good. Now housed in an easily removable clear acetate cover.

A highly attractive association copy of the inaugural publication of the Royal Society of Literature’s Academic Committee, presented by Haldane to his fellow founder Edmund Gosse, with Gosse’s bookplate and Haldane’s inscription.

Stock code: 004203. Location: Bookroom.

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