Songbooks: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?

Subject: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Jun 06 - 08:12 PM

The working anthology of Cicely Fox Smith poems is now over 370 poems, as posted on: click here for website

However, neither Shantyfreak nor myself have access to two of her earlier poety books: SONGS OF A GREATER BRITAIN (1899) and WINGS OF THE MORNING (1904). Does anyone have a copy of either of these books? We've never run across them on the used books websites.

A copy of WINGS OF THE MORNING is reported to be in the Plymouth library naval reference collection.

We did manage to get a photocopy of another early poetry book, THE FOREMOST TRAIL (1899), from Nobby Dye of Bristol and that was very interesting and helpful.

We would very much like to complete our work and would appreciate any leads.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Jun 06 - 08:31 PM

Thanks - you've done an amazing job there. I have never been able to understand how it came about that Cicely Fox Smith's very existence has been totally ignored by the literary establishment for all these years, and still is now. For example, not a mention in the Oxford Companion to English Literature. And yet her songs/poems get passed around and performed, and learned by heart across the country and around the world, in a way that is true of very few of her comtemporaries.

Good luck in chasing up the remaining verses. And I wish someone could find someof her prose stories and post them somewhere. In fact it'd be great if someone could produce a biography. I'm sure there's the makings of a fascinating story.

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Effsee
Date: 04 Jun 06 - 09:54 PM

Charley, ever thought of asking Rosemary Tawney? Cyril was a great collector of this sort of stuff.

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Jun 06 - 10:48 PM

McGrath-

Thanks for the encouragement.

Effsee-

I'll send Rosemary an e-mail right away.

With regard to the biography, that's pretty much in Danny McLeod's court. He's amassed probably the most comprehensive notes on CFS's life and works.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: open mike
Date: 04 Jun 06 - 11:40 PM

there are 14 books by Cicely Fox Smith available on www.abebooks.com

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Jun 06 - 07:45 AM

"There are many books," says Murphey, "And I guess I've read the best..." to paraphrase CFS's "Port o' Dreams" BUT some are extremely rare. SONGS OF A GREATER BRITAIN (1899) and WINGS OF THE MORNING (1904) are the two poetry books we're looking for now.

There are over a dozen major CFS poetry books, some of them overlapping in terms of poems included. The anthology hopes to capture at least 400 poems. The long bio section on her page at the Oldoetry website describes all her known publications, well over 40 books.

I also wouldn't mind a copy of her travelogue ALL THE WAY ROUND, in which she describes her run up and down the West and and East coasts of Africa in the 1930's.

The real fiction prize would be a copy of her short romance novel PEREGRINE IN LOVE which I've only read reviews of. There may be strong parallels with her life experience in this work.

But the task at hand is posting her early poetic work which is certainly not my favorite period of her writing. She was in her late teens then and much of her poetry was unabashedly patriotic, fervently embracing British emperialism. Still this early work helps show what kind of young woman she was before she was sent, much against her will, to Victoria, British Columbia.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Jun 06 - 11:51 AM

Just received a PM from a CFS admirer who lives near the birthplace of Cicely Fox Smith, in Lymm, Cheshire, with various library references in the UK for the two books we've been seeking. We should be able to photocopy them when we get to England in October.

Once again, Mudcat proves to be an invaluable resource.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: nutty
Date: 07 Jul 06 - 01:55 AM

This may be the information that you have already received but you can do a UK library search using this site ......

Copac

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Oct 06 - 10:31 AM

Success! I was able to photocopy the two missing poetry books, SONGS OF GREATER BRITAIN (1899) and WINGS OF THE MORNING (1904) while I was at the British Library in London during our visit to the UK in October. I found the Library staff very helpful.

I will be adding the 150 poems in these books to the collection of 400 at the Oldpoetry website under Cicely Fox Smith.

As with the poems from her other early work THE FOREMOST TRAIL, these poems tend to be patriotic and jingoistic, unlike much of her later work. But the early poems do add perspective to the kind of young woman she was before she gained more life experience.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Shantyfreak
Date: 01 Dec 06 - 01:22 PM

As you folk can see Charley has been driving this little hunt recently (and with great success) but what neither us can hope to do alone is find the CFS poems that were not in her own books but were printed in the newspapers in Canada, in Punch, in The Spectator, Outlook, Country Life, The Times Literary Supplement, The Windsor Magazine . . .
She also wrotean unknown number of prefaces and articles for other writers as well as a number of travelogues, often with poems for chapter headings and light relief.
If any of you out there have any verifiable examples we would appreciate your help in producing a "Cicely Fox Smith Complete Poems" collection before her 125th birthday next February.
Shantyfreak

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Dec 06 - 02:28 PM

refresh!

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: GUEST,Kevin leary
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 03:14 PM

Charley,I am not an expert on this person but have been talking today to a friend of mine who is giving a paper on her and her life at the Maritime folk festival next year. Danny has bought many items about CFS since starting to put her words to folk songs 6 years ago and singing the songs at that event. If you are not already aware of this it may be very useful for you to meet up,email me if it helps.

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 05:17 PM

Kevin-

Danny McLeod was the first person to introduce me to C. Fox Smith's poems back in 2001. We also shared a workshop on her poems at the Mystic Sea Music Festival. I always provide Danny an update of what I've been doing.

The CFS anthology that I and Jim Saville have been posting to the Oldpoetry website now contains over 550 of her poems. Here's a link to her page on that website: Click here

The only major book of hers that I don't have a complete copy of is her novel PEREGRINE IN LOVE; it's in libraries in the UK but I was only able to copy the first chapter when I was in London.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 06:48 PM

Once again, thanks for what you've achieved with this, Charley.

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Dec 07 - 04:31 PM

McGrath-

Thanks for the compliment.

I don't suppose I could persuade you to secure PEREGRINE IN LOVE via inter-library loan, and photocopy the rest of the novel. It's a thrilling tale of a young lady who sails out to Victoria, British Columbia, engaged to someone she has no interest in but she falls in love with the ship's mate. One wonders how it all ends? Could it really be autobiographical?

You or any other interested party could be the first to know!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Gulliver
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 01:58 PM

Charley, I do work for a library here in Dublin, and I'll enquire on Tuesday next when I'm there whether this book can be obtained on inter-library loan. If it can I'll request it and copy/scan what you want from it. Please PM me for further details. This library is next door to the Irish Traditional Music archive, so if you'd like anything from there I could do that too.

I'm thankful to Dick Miles' web site for making me aware of this interesting writer in the first place.

Don

Subject: RE: Songbooks: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 10:57 PM

Don-

I certainly would be grateful. I believe there are several copies in the British Library system.
It took me a week to get my hands on a copy via the British Library in London but I also needed to copy four other poetry books as higher priority and ran out of time. Probably all you need to search for is the title PEREGRINE IN LOVE by Cicely Fox Smith, or C. Fox Smith, or sometimes C. Fox-Smith, published by HODDER AND STOUGHTON, London, 1920. Officially I was not supposed to copy more than 20-30 pages from any one book but no one seemed to care that I was spending an inordinate amount of time copying those 20 pages. As I mentioned above I do have copies of pages 9-42 but how does the story end? Does the young handsome ship's officier Peregrine Ransome ever admit his love to the intriguing young lady from England, engaged to another man, or does he sail off alone into the sunset, broken hearted?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Songbooks: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: GUEST,Bradfordian
Date: 12 May 08 - 11:18 AM

Just for completeness, I got hold of Peregrine, photographed the pages & passed them on to Charlie & Shantyfreak. Copyright permitting, it be nice to see this uploaded to Guttenberg.

Brad

Subject: RE: Songbooks: Missing C. Fox Smith Books?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 12 May 08 - 11:36 AM

Brad has certainly done a great job and we now know how the story ends, and you don't!

It certainly would make sense to pass the scanned files along to Guttenberg so that this interesting book would be more available to the public.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble