The Library at Salisbury House contains an undeniably important collection of early 20th Century, English-language literature and manuscripts, providing yet another enduring testament to the high levels of critical foresight and refinement that Carl and Edith Weeks applied when making their various cultural acquisitions. Interestingly enough, the act of purchasing some of the most important books in the Library also likely involved Carl and Edith skirting the laws of the day, as the works of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner and many others were banned regionally, nationally or even internationally at the time of their publication.
Consider James Joyce’s Ulysses. There are three copies in the Salisbury House Library: one from the 1,000-copy first edition from 1922, one signed and illustrated by Henri Matisse for the Limited Editions Club in 1935, and one “ordinary edition, 2 vols., in worn box” (per our inventory notes) published in Hamburg in 1932. Now consider the legal and literary environment within which Carl and Edith acquired these books (with thanks to Anne Lyon Haight’s Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. for reference):
1918: Early installments of Ulysses published in The Little Review were burned by the U.S. Post Office.
1922: Imported copies of Ulysses were burned by the U.S Post Office.
1923: 499 Copies of Ulysses were burned by English customs authorities, 500 copies were burned by the U.S. Post Office, and U.S. federal courts ruled against its legal publication; as a result of this latter action, no copyright existed in the United States and Joyce received no royalties from thousands of pirated editions in the years ahead.
1929: Ulysses is banned in England.
1930: A copy of Ulysses sent to Random House is seized by the Collector of Customs as obscene.
It was not until 1933, in fact, that courts in the United States finally ruled that Ulysses was legal for importation, publication and distribution to the Nation’s citizens, following a series of cases and appeals spawned by another copy of the book being captured by Customs upon import. Did Carl and Edith own one of their first two copies before then? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that they did, since there’s clear evidence of their wanting (and getting) things hot of the presses during their peak collecting years. Did they break the letter or spirit of the law, or violate the social mores of their era, to get it? You be the judge.
The Salisbury House Library also contains a massive collection of signed, first-edition works by D.H. Lawrence, along with many pieces of correspondence with and about him. His works were perhaps even more controversial (and illegal) in the United States, with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Women in Love and Paintings being banned for import by Customs in 1929. Amazingly enough, it was not until 1959 that an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published in the United States — and it was immediately seized by the Post Office and impounded, resulting in a year-long legal battle that finally removed the book’s stigma as a piece of literary contraband.
By the time a reader could legally purchase a complete, domestic edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, its author had been dead for 30 years, Edith Weeks had been dead for five years, and Carl Weeks had but one year left in his long life. I think it’s a testament to Carl’s tenacity in pursuit of great literature that he apparently purchased a copy of that 1959 edition, making it one of the dozen or so final additions to the Library in his lifetime. That (legal) 1959 edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover still shares shelf-space with a signed original (illegal) 1928 edition, as well as two (illegal) pirated American editions published in the late 1920s.
So bravo for our wise book smugglers at Salisbury House, who knew and recognized great art when they saw it. We’re all the better for their efforts.
Note: the Salisbury House Library Collection is now housed at Grinnell College where it is processed and studied. To learn more visit the special collections website.
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