Society members might be interested in an unusual first edition copy of The Soul of London which is being sold next month by Forum Auctions in London.
The front endpaper contains a handwritten inscription to Joseph Conrad from “Ford Madox Hueffer” dated 1905, and below it another to Jeanne Foster from “Ford Madox Ford” dated 1926. The book had presumably returned to Ford after Conrad’s death in 1924, the same year that Jeanne Robert Foster had been the New York editor of Ford’s transatlantic review.1 At the bottom of the page Ford has written “Habent sua fata libelli”, meaning “little books have their own destinies”.
The book has an estimate of £2,000 – £3,000, and the auction is on 19th November 2026. Full details, including images, are on the Forum Auctions website.
- For more on Foster, see this article on the Society Blog. ↩︎
