This year, The Rivendale Press published another volume in the Questing Collector Series, the tenth volume to date: Robert Ross as Author by Michael Seeney, consisting of an introduction, a checklist and three appendices.
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| Michael Seeney, Robert Ross as Author (The Rivendale Press, 2025) |
Many aspects of his life have been covered in the three biographies published to date: Robert Ross, Friend of Friends by Margery Ross (1952), Wilde's Devoted Friend: a Life of Robert Ross 1869-1918 by Maureen Borland (1990), and Robbie Ross. Oscar Wilde's True Love by Jonathan Fryer (2000). They portray him as a friend and lover, and it is abundantly clear that Ross, as Wilde's friend, played a decisive role in his life, but as an independent personality, he remains underexposed as a result. One of the ephemeral aspects of his life is an incessant stream of publications, so many of which were published anonymously that they remained invisible for a long time and could not be attributed to him.
The checklist records no fewer than 420 publications, forty-two of which appeared between 1892 and 1905. Most articles were published between 1905 and 1918 (the year of his death). On average, he published around thirty articles per year. More than half of these were published in The Morning Post between 1908 and 1914.
The introduction covers his various publication channels, starting with The Gadfly and The Granta, and follows Ross's career as an author chronologically from The Saturday Review and The Academy to The Morning Post, The Bystander and The Burlington Magazine. Ross published reviews, satire and articles in other periodicals as well, such as Cornhill Magazine, The Times and La Revue politique et littéraire.
While the introduction is arranged chronologically, the bibliography is not. It is based on the classification used in literary bibliographies, such as Donald Gallup's bibliography of the work of T.S. Eliot: first the publications in book form, followed by contributions to books, and then articles in periodicals. These are arranged alphabetically by journal title, except at the end, where there is a section for miscellaneous items: 'Contributions to other periodials'.
This does not really do justice to the journalist and critic Ross; he is treated as an author of books, which he was not. He was primarily a kind of columnist who could afford to take enormous liberties in his articles. A chronological list (with a good index) would be more obvious for making the work easy to navigate.
As a reader of bibliographies, I would also have liked to see each entry accompanied by a brief summary of the subject and Ross's opinion – now there are only very brief additions such as 'review' or 'story'. Of course, that would have doubled the size, but that space would have been made available by omitting the three examples of his writing (the three appendices): perhaps it is time for a more extensive selection of his pieces in a separate publication?
Nevertheless, this is an indispensable book for anyone who has at least one of the biographical studies on their bookshelf, and I hope that it will find its way into university libraries. Despite the current state of digitisation of periodicals, compiling such an overview is still a hellish task.
Michael Seeney, Robert Ross as AuthorPaperback with marbled paper wrappers: 40 numbered copies only
14.8 x 21.0 cm., 68 pp., 3 black and white illustrations.
ISBN 978 1 904201 458
£20.00 / $25.00
