Comments on: Collectability in Question? “Letter From A Master Addict”

By: Barry Miles

Barry Miles — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 18:16:55 +0000

A bit late to respond to this article but let me just clear up a few points. The copy of the British Journal of Addiction I used to describe for the M&M Bibliography was William Burroughs’ own. The reason it was not included in the Descriptive Catalogue of the WSB Archive was that Bill wanted to keep it (though what happened to it later I don’t know.) Burroughs received 50 copies off the offprint and many were still in the original envelope that he received them in when I described his archives. The reason I said ‘probably in an edition of 50 copies’ was because I didn’t know if Dr. Dent had made more copies than this and sent them out himself. We sold most of Bill’s remaining copies to Richard Aaron, who was just in the process of becoming a bookseller rather than a collector and he sold them through his rare book catalogue. Though Eric Shoaf is correct about peer review copies and everything, I’m not sure that the British Journal of Addiction was on quite this level. Bill told me that Dr. Dent had asked him if he wanted some copies and he had said ‘yes’. The key thing here is that Dr. Dent was both the editor and the publisher of the British Journal of Addiction and he was also Bill’s doctor. Bill knew him because it was Dent who gave him the apomorphine treatment. So it was not exactly an academic peer review situation here, it was Dr. Dent – obviously impressed by Bill’s knowledge of the subject – who asked Bill to write the piece. I may be wrong, but I doubt it was ever sent out in that way. I did have a number of discussions with other bibliographers and booksellers and we all agreed that it should be listed as a “C” item not as “A’ item as a few people have suggested since then.

By: Demi

Demi — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 16:56:18 +0000

One has to click through, but I have a copy of C1a available for view at Outskirts of the City. This copy came to me through Hardy Tree author J. Warwick Sweeney (Dr. Dent’s *Grandson*), mentioned in Jim’s comment.

https://www.outskirtsofthecity.com/2022/04/the-british-journal-of-addiction-volume.html

By: Kristopher Biernatsky

Kristopher Biernatsky — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 16:04:37 +0000

I wonder if he requested the 50 copies to aid in the trial he was going through. I read somewhere (most likely in Miles’ “Call Me Burroughs”) that he was urged to write the article by his lawyer in preparation for a trial. I may, of course, be misremembering this. But I’m open to any excuse that let’s me dig through the Miles book again.

By: Jim Pennington

Jim Pennington — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 17:30:47 +0000

The genesis of this ‘Letter’ and the tribulations of the Master Addict as he went through the apo-morphine treatment with the Doctor addressed in the covering note are superbly narrated in the recently published “Hardy Tree” by Warwick Sweeney, the great grand-son of that Doctor, John Yerbury Dent. I asked Warwick who the Mr ______ was and he told me F. A. Hornibrook, whose book “The Culture of the Abdomen” had been around since 1924 and appeared as a Penguin in 1957…just in time for Burroughs to carry around with him on his travels after the first cure in ’56.
I also puzzled myself as to why neither Hornibrook or Dent had been named. It turns out back then it was, if not illegal then very, very bad form for any Doctor to be ‘advertised’ and whilst Hornibrook was not a Doctor (far from it), naming would be tantamount to him being ‘advertised’ by a Doctor.
So:
remember::: “Hardy Tree” by Warwick Sweeney … you heard it here first.