An exquisite copy of Samuel Bagster’s miniature edition of The Psalms of David (c.1829) finely bound in full black morocco with a metal clasp, from the libraries of Valentine Ackland and British artist Phillida Gili.
VA and Sylvia Townsend Warner likely met Gili through her parents, Reynolds Stone and Janet Woods, who themselves became friends through VA’s antiques business, which sheran from the long sun-parlour of their Frome Vauchurch home in the 1950s.
VA, whose shop “was especially popular with collectors of dolls’ houses and miniature objects” (Bingham, 2021), evidently also appreciated miniature books herself. One of a collection of four miniature books from VA’s library that we have handled (with yet another featuring a gift inscription from the first period of her affair with Elizabeth Wade White: “V.A from E.W.W 1:1:39,”), these items suggest, perhaps, that miniature books were a lover’s currency of sorts between the two women. They certainly travel compactly and can be packaged easily, a consideration for such a long-standing transatlantic affair. In an odd parallel with VA, EWW also went on to trade in antiquarian and collectable objects, running White & Holahan, Books with her lover Evelyn Holahan from their Connecticut home, the Patch, from the 1940s.
Upon her death in November 1969, VA, whose success as an antiques dealer had derived in part from her “sense of objects as individual
things, relics of people and containers of their love” (ibid), bequeathed many of her own books to friends, hence, Phillida Gili’s inscription: “left to me by Valentine Ackland, December 1969”.
Frances Bingham (2021) Valentine Ackland: A transgressive life (Bath: Handheld Press)