first edition
1939 · London
by URCH, R.O.G. [Reginald Oliver Gilling]
London: Eyre & Spottiswoode / The Right Book Club, 1939. First Edition. First impression. Octavo. Blue coarse-woven cloth; dustjacket; xii,275pp. Mild yawn and a bit of sunning to board edges; text complete, clean, and tight. In the original dustwrapper, chiped at spine ends, rubbed and soiled on lighter portions; Good only. Dustwrapper front flap lists the Selection Committee and Patrons of the Right Book Club.
A curious work, purporting to be a memoir of one Gregóriy (Grisha) Antónovich Philíppoff, the so-called "Rabbit King of Russia," and his attempts to develop industrial-scale rabbit farming so as to "...feed and rescue Russia's millions from enforced vegetarianism due to the depletion of ordinary flocks and herds." The book is filled with (apparently factual) footnotes that lend it a scholarly flavor; however, we can find no evidence that comrade Philippoff ever actually existed, and many of the most improbable details of the book are passed over with such breezy insouciance that this cataloguer is led to believe that Mr. Urch, a product of the English public school system and clearly no fan of bolshevism, may have been taking the proverbial piss. Urch (1884-1945) was a special Eastern European correspondent for the London Times for much of the period between the October revolution and his death, in Stockholm, at the end of WW2.
The "Right Book Club," established in 1937 as a (feeble) counter to Victor Gollancz' highly successful "Left Book Club," has been linked by some historians (apparently without documentation) to British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Moseley. Whether the assertion is correct or not, the list of Selectors and Patrons inside the dustwrapper's front flap includes more than a few figures associated with the pre-war Fascist movement, including Norman Thwaites; Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple; Sir Harry Brittain; William Forbes-Sempill, and others. (Inventory #: 84370)
A curious work, purporting to be a memoir of one Gregóriy (Grisha) Antónovich Philíppoff, the so-called "Rabbit King of Russia," and his attempts to develop industrial-scale rabbit farming so as to "...feed and rescue Russia's millions from enforced vegetarianism due to the depletion of ordinary flocks and herds." The book is filled with (apparently factual) footnotes that lend it a scholarly flavor; however, we can find no evidence that comrade Philippoff ever actually existed, and many of the most improbable details of the book are passed over with such breezy insouciance that this cataloguer is led to believe that Mr. Urch, a product of the English public school system and clearly no fan of bolshevism, may have been taking the proverbial piss. Urch (1884-1945) was a special Eastern European correspondent for the London Times for much of the period between the October revolution and his death, in Stockholm, at the end of WW2.
The "Right Book Club," established in 1937 as a (feeble) counter to Victor Gollancz' highly successful "Left Book Club," has been linked by some historians (apparently without documentation) to British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Moseley. Whether the assertion is correct or not, the list of Selectors and Patrons inside the dustwrapper's front flap includes more than a few figures associated with the pre-war Fascist movement, including Norman Thwaites; Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple; Sir Harry Brittain; William Forbes-Sempill, and others. (Inventory #: 84370)
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