Obsolete Spells: Poems & Prose from Victor Neuburg & the Vine Press 1920–1930

Edited by Justin Hopper

Strange Attractor Press, 2022

Nidottu, 240 sivua

"A collection of rare pagan poetry and purple prose from the heart of the 1920s counterculture.

Victor Neuburg is most famous for two things: discovering Dylan Thomas, and being the man that Aleister Crowley once turned into a camel. Obsolete Spells offers another side of Neuburg, through his own poems and the strange books of Vine Press, the hand-operated imprint he ran from his West Sussex cottage between 1920 and 1930.

Neuburg's youth involved terrifying-yet-farcical years as Crowley's lover, victim, and magickal sidekick. His later period, as editor of the influential "Poet's Corner" column for the Sunday Referee, made him a key figure in London's literary scene.

But in between, Neuburg acted as a conduit for bohemian writers, arts luminaries, and the sexually adventurous: Peter Warlock set his words to music, singer Marian Anderson lived in his spare room, and he was a fixture at utopian community, the Sanctuary. Through it all, he turned the handle on the Vine Press: books of nature writing and anonymous song; poems and artwork worthy of The Wicker Man, side-by-side with a book on cricket.

Obsolete Spells offers a selection of Neuburg's work and from other Vine Press books—over-the-top hymns to the Old Gods, tales from a utopian landscape, and more, most of which have been out of print for a century."