Minor Carpenter
by
Jonathan Cutbill




Edward Wight was presumably a friend of Beith who was one of Carpenter's three literary executors and edited the memorial volume. So it was very nice to find, tucked into the book





The first is well known and this example has been printed as a Post Card. Did he send them himself to admirers? I always thing he looks like a very respectably Wild West gun slinger! The second is a studio portrait by Elliot & Fry, Ltd. I found 20 of these in a bookshop in St Albans also in the 1980s.
The next is the hut at Millthorpe in which EC wrote most of Towards Democracy.
This again was printed in quantities . It is a better photo than the one in My Days and Dreams.

Henry Bryan Binns (who took the photo?) did research work for Carpenter in the British Museum in 1904. This copy has an inscription on the back.

I'll end this short piece by going back to the early days of Towards Democracy.
The first edition nowhere carried EC's name. Plenty of copies survive and most of those I have seen have inscriptions. This one is from the copy EC gave to his brother.
The 2nd edition was double the size. This edition still did not give EC as author but he did claim copyright.
This copy was given by EC to George Hukin., one of EC's three lovers called George.
The 3rd edition is a very rare book, far more difficult to find than the first. EC published Part 4 of TD as a separate book. But it was followed almost immediatelt by the first complete edition so EC seems to have been left with a lot of unsold copies. It is quite common and the number signed by EC suggests he kept them at Millthorpe as gifts for visiting admirers.
The inscriptions below could stand as a very potted biography of Edward Carpenter.


