Annotations (Signed and Inscribed)

First edition, first impression.  Signed and inscribed by Susan Miles on the front free endpaper, ‘Margaret Thomson, With all good wishes from L S Stebbing’s friend, Susan Miles, September 1943’.  54pp.  Quarter bound in pale blue cloth over decorated paper-covered boards, red title label on front panel.  8vo.  Boards are worn and faded around edges, gently rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends, a few marks.  Boards a little bowed.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  

Susan Miles was the pen name of Ursula Wyllie Roberts (1887-1975).  The niece of Newlyn School painter, William Titcomb, she published several slim volumes of poetry under that pen name, Annotations being the second, after Dunch (1918).  Harold Munro, in his often harsh Some Contemporary Poets (1920) spoke of her poetry positively and Herbert Palmer described her as ‘one [of] the most original’ in his 1938 study of post-Victorian poetry.  As Ursula Roberts she also wrote several pamphlets on feminist themes, including “The Cause of Purity” and “Women’s Suffrage”.   The verse novel, Lettice Delmer, was first published in 1958 and reissued by Persephone Books in 2000.  

The L S Stebbing referred to in the inscription is likely Lizzie Susan Stebbing, a prominent British philosopher – the first women to hold a philosophy chair in the UK, and first female President of Humanists UK.  Stebbing was indeed a friend: she died in the same month as the inscription is dated.