Bachelors of Art - Edward Perry Warren and The Lewes House Brotherhood by Sox, David - 1991

London: Fourth Estate, 1991. A near Fine unmarked copy (Fine apart from a few very small marks to closed top edge) with a Fine dustjacket which is not price clipped. 289 pages. 29 illustrations. Edward Perry Warren collected art and young men. Bachelors of Art is the previously unpublished account of how this wealthy American expatriate came, in the 1890's, to fashion a bizarre brotherhood of aesthetes. From their home in Lewes, East Sussex, 'Ned' Warren and his closest companion John Marshall (they called each other 'Puppy') together scoured Italy and Greece for Classical antiquities. Their extraordinary finds and purchases became the foundations of the great collections at the Boston Museum and the Metropolitan in New York. 'There is nothing to be got nowadays, ' complained the British Museum, 'since Warren and Marshall are always on the spot first.' Matthew Stewart Prichard, brilliant, eccentric, a disciple of Henri Bergson and confidant of Matisse, was another member of Warren's coterie of bachelors. As was the equally eccentric John Fothergill, whom at one time Oscar Wilde had in mind to replace Lord Alfred Douglas in his affections.Fothergill's own memoirs about his later career as the outlandish innkeeper of the Spreadeagle at Thame near Oxford (where he entertained writers such as Evelyn Waugh, H.G. Wells and Rebecca West) have become minor classics. His diary, however, has not before now been used as source material and has lain unread and unpublished until deciphered by David Sox. After 12 years, Warren's attempt to create a fraternity based on Greek ideals failed, as it was bound to do. Warren's all-providing despotism proved too much. L. First. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.