Moments of Love. A Novel in Two Books. Variety of Virtue.

n.p. . [1925].

Typescript novel with extensive manuscript corrections and alterations. ff. [2], 117, [2], 118-276. Text on recto only, tied with string through two punched holes in the left margin and tied into a cover fashioned from heavy card apparently salvaged from packing material for a French retailer of sheet music and musical instruments. Housed in a custom made cloth wrapper and slipcase. Although the title page is loose and one of the string ties has broken (both easily repairable), this unique object is in very good condition.
In addition to the usual title page information, the author has written "By Frederick T. Bason, 13 New Church Road, S.E.5. First novel written between age of 18 & 19. About/over 70,000 words. A portrait of two women". There are two later inscriptions in pencil by the author. One, (underneath his nom de plume) reads "What a blasted name to invent. But I was young" and the other reads "My God! Its now 1955 & I am now 49. I wrote this 30 years ago".
This is a bizarre and rather wonderful (in its own way) work by Fred Bason, who is, himself a bizarre and rather wonderful (in his own way) figure beautifully and concisely summed up in the much missed (and, again, rather wonderful) James Fleming's "short biography" in the Book Collector (https://www.thebookcollector.co.uk/features/fred-bason-short-biography). Bason is best known for his diaries which are widely available and which the Book Collector issued as an audio book narrated by the estimable Clive Farahar. Bason's background was very modest, but he felt no need to "escape" from it – indeed he lived in the same south-east London council house all his life. However, books opened up a world in which he moved comfortably and unselfconsciously. It was a world that Bason discovered early on and against the odds: this extraordinary novel is dedicated to "Mother who knew I could not write it, to Dad who did not care whether I did or not and lastly to my dear who, with kisses and kindness, inspired it". It is not a good novel. But that is not the point. Rather like Dr Johnson's dog walking on two legs, the interest lies, not in whether it is done well, but in the fact that it is done at all. Bason is a figure who could not exist now – society has changed, education has changed, the book trade has changed. But his diaries survive and we should continue to remember Bason and perhaps this curiosity should be revived.