£1,063
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 630
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
A Novel. Author's autograph manuscript (c.. 209pp.) and heavily annotated and corrected typescript (c.215pp.), inscribed in red pen on the title by the author "To him what launched this mss, John Sommerfield" and in the hand of S. Sommerfield "He has made restitution. May god rest his soul. I hope he doesn't lose on it. For Charles Stonehill, S. Sommerfield", manuscript in red or green ink and pencil, typescript corrected in red or green ink and pencil, in card folder with contact details of Vernon Sommerfield, some sections page numbered, Chapter 1 marked "June 1928, New York", at end marked "John Sommerfield, 19 Park Place, Kensington Gardens, W."
Note: Sommerfield left University College School at the age of 16 and worked as a newspaper delivery boy, stage hand and merchant seaman before moving to Chelsea, where he was active in the Communist Party. He appears to have joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s and it was a major part of his life for the following quarter century. He wrote columns for several Communist periodicals, including the Daily Worker, and was active in the Communist Party Writers' Group.
Sommerfield's first two books, They Die Young (1930) – which was published in the United States as The Death of Christopher – and Behind the Scenes (1934) drew upon his experiences at sea and as a stage hand. 1936 saw the publication of May Day, which is considered Sommerfield's most important work. The novel was published by the Communist Party's publishing house, and fictionalises a Communist uprising in London.
Shortly after the publication of May Day, Sommerfield volunteered for the International Brigades and fought in the Spanish Civil War alongside his friend John Cornford. After returning he discovered that he had been reported dead. During World War II he served as an aircraft support mechanic in Burma and India. This wartime service in Asia with the RAF provided the inspiration for some of his best short stories, collected after the war as The Survivors (1947).
In 1937 Sommerfield published Volunteer in Spain, which was an account of his time in Spain. George Orwell called the memoir a "piece of sentimental tripe", while others praised it and called Sommerfield "an excellent writer". The book was dedicated to Cornford, who was killed in Spain in December 1936. The poet and novelist Malcolm Lowry, a close friend of Sommerfield's, counted him as an important influence, and dedicated his poem Song About Madrid, Useful Any Time to him and Julian Bell.
Perhaps the most widely read of Sommerfield's works was Trouble in Porter Street, published in 1939. The Communist Party asked Sommerfield to write a manual about how to organise a rent strike. He wrote a short story for this purpose instead which was published cheaply as a pamphlet and sold in tens of thousands. Sommerfield was also active in the Mass Observation project and took the lead in the research, largely in Bolton, for The Pub and the People.
Throughout the war and in the following decade, Sommerfield continued to write for Communist and progressive periodicals and literary journals, including John Lehmann's New Writing journal, and worked largely in documentary films. Among his writing, The Adversaries (1952) was a historical novel based on the life of the mathematician Evariste Galois while North West Five (1960) was a novel about a young working class couple struggling to make their own way in post-war Kentish Town in north London.
The item appears to be a mixture of original manuscript and heavily annotated typescript drafts, new sections being headed "Mss 1st", "3/rd," etc. Due to erratic, and the absence of, page numbering, and not having a copy of the published novel, it has not been possible to establish with certainty if the entire novel is present in manuscript or typescript but it does appear to be complete.
A significant and early literary manuscript of one of Britain's most radical political writers of the inter-war era, which also reflects Sommerfield's awareness of and response to modernist writing. Of particular topicality is Christopher's interest in the human consequences of technological advances and their implications for human liberty.