WAIN LOUIS: (1860-1939) English artist, remembered for his drawings featuring anthropomorphized large-eyed cats and kittens. A good pair of A.Ls.S., Louis Wain, four pages (total), 8vo, Bendigo, Westgate on Sea, 26^th August and 1^st September 1907, each to [Peter] Keary. In the first letter Wain asks his correspondent not to forget about an article for his annual and continues 'By the bye I am sending tonight to Mr. Everett an article on Canada which may interest you as you have I think been that way. The facts were given by a Canadian farmer whose an old friend of mine & worse than I have painted them. The official facts are very bad too'. With blank integral leaf. In the second letter Wain thanks his correspondent for their manuscript, remarking 'it is quite unconventional & out of the ruck if you don't mind me saying so, & just what I strive for for my annual', and further writing 'I am writing a bit of imaginative fancy myself for the annual & I hope to make the whole thing quite out of the way. I touch politics in a very satirical manner too in some drawings. But it is only the upper classes who are satirical in our days, the mass of the people take umbrage at anything which hits them'. Rare. VG, 2

 

Peter Keary (1865-1915) British editor of TitBits from 1884-90, when, in conjunction with C. Arthur Pearson, he started Pearson's Weekly.

 

The Louis Wain Annual was published between 1901 and 1915.