A Small Story about a copy of Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Fourteen Dances of Shiva…

Posted: January 21st, 2019 | No Comments »

In the London Library I came across a copy of the Sri Lankan Tamil philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy’s book Fourteen Dances of Shiva, published in 1918. This is an interesting copy to find in London as it was published by The Sunwise Turn Company of New York and contains, as you can see below, their stamp.

However the book was then sent to their London agents, Luzac & Co. of Great Russell Street (in Bloomsbury). The Sunwise Turn bookshop and publishing house was run by Mary Mowbray-Clarke in the nineteen-teens and twenties and was a hotbed for modern art, ideas and anarchy. Luzacs & Co were near the British Museum and specialised in importing books from foeign publishers and books on matter Oriental as well as selling the odd antiquity or two. They clearly sold the book to the London Library.

101 years later I borrowed it…

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