Books from the library of [...] with gift inscriptions, etc. [6 Vols.] - Surtees (Robert Smith), Handley Cross; or, Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt, 1854, second issue, without Leech's name in the Preface, with a gift inscription to the flyleaf: 'Vera Holme from E. Haverfield & Adam - a present for a good child on her 31st Birthday, Aug. 29. 1912 " The Flah"[?]' and a quotation from Oliver Herford on the facing pastedown ('I sometimes think the pussy willows grey, Are angel kittens who have lost their way, And every bulrush on the river's bank, a cat tail from some lovely cat astray'), with the Jessie M. King bookplate of Vera Holme- Fitzpatrick (Percy, Sir), Jock of the Bushveld, Longmans, Green, 1909, in a W.H. Smith gift binding of full pigskin and gilt, the upper board with blind stamped wreath enclosing the message 'E.H. from V.' stamped in gilt; inscribed on the initial blank: 'To my best and dearest friend Evelina Haverfield, for her birthday, Aug: 9th, 1910, from Vera Holme', and with the Jessie M. King bookplate of Vera Holme- Fortescue (J.W., Hon.), The Story of a Red-Deer, Macmillan, 1912, inscribed on the half-title: 'Vera Holme, from her loving E. Haverfield, Xmas 1913' with the Jessie M. King bookplate of Vera Holme- Dobrée (Bonamy), Sarah Churchill, Gerald Howe, 1927, inscribed on the flyleaf: 'Margaret C. Greenlees, from V.L.H., 29th May 1928'- Shaw (Clement), Letizia Bonaparte (Madame Mère), Gerald Howe, 1928, inscribed on the flyleaf: 'Margaret C. Greenlees, from V.L.H., 29th June 1928'- Hall (Radclyffe), Adam's Breed, Jonathan Cape, 1929, signed and dated by the author in 1931 with the Jessie M. King bookplate of Vera Holme

Bookseller Notes

A group of books with superb associations touching on a few prominent figures in the militant Suffrage movement: all were at one stage in the ownership of Vera L. Holme, the majority with her striking bookplate and all but one with gift inscriptions either to or from her - in the earlier books we have birthday gifts between Holme and her long-term partner, the high-born suffragette and aid-worker Evelina Haverfield; latterly, a couple of gifts from Holme to Margaret C. Greenlees - who, along with Margaret Ker, was part of a mnage formed with Holme at Lochearnhead. In all cases there is, in the book itself, some resonance with the biography of the respective owners.Vera 'Jack' Holme was an actress and musician, who became involved in the militant suffrage movement around 1908, serving a prison sentence for stone-throwing in 1911; she served as chauffeur to Emmelines Pankhurst and Pethick-Lawrence - 'wearing a striking uniform in the WSPU colours, with a smart peaked cap, decorated with her RAC badge of efficiency' (ODNB). Industry magazine 'The Chauffeur' considered her to have been the very first female chauffeur in the country. Her hair cut short, in a uniform associated with ordered masculinity, Holme became a totemic figure - in later years she was associated with the circle of Jessie M. King, who designed her bookplate featuring the appropriate figure of Joan of Arc (the quotation at foot is from Edward Carpenter).Holme met the Hon. Evelina Haverfield (ne Scarlett) through the WSPU and they lived together in Devon from 1911; in common with her partner, she suffered (or rather achieved) imprisonment in that year, having attempted to break a police cordon by leading horses out of their ranks - two earlier arrests had avoided jail terms after fines were paid without Haverfield's consent. Haverfield was, as the incident with the police horses might indicate, 'a keen sportswoman' (ODNB), and all of the gifts between her and Holme convey a love of animals - and in the case of the Fitzpatrick, a reference to her time in South Africa where, with her then-husband, she 'formed a retirement camp for horses left to die on the veldt'. During the First World War, and after, Haverfield worked for the Serbian cause - in which she was assisted by Holme, who carried on her work there as the administrator for the Haverfield Fund for Serbian Children, following her partner's death from pneumonia in 1920 in Baijna Bashta (where she had founded an orphanage for Serbian children).It was whilst an ambulance and relief lorry driver in Serbia for the Scottish Women's Hospitals that Holme met Ker and Greenlees; the two books here inscribed to the latter are, appropriately enough, from the publisher's 'Representative Women' series. Jilll Liddington, in an essay on the Scottish Women's Hospital Units' work in the Balkans from the book 'Aftermaths of War', refers to the 'flamboyant Holme-Greenlees coterie' as analogous to that of 'Radcliffe Hall [sic]' (p. 413) - a signed copy of whose 'Adam's Breed' is illustrative of the association, their acquaintance likely to have been made through the theatre director and suffragist Edith Craig.