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Grey wrappers. Upper cover very faintly creased. Edition limited to 55 numbered copies, this copy not an ad personam copy but numbered by hand "5". (Most copies were bound in blue wrappers, but, the Tragara Press's bibliographer Steven Halliwell records, "A few copies bearing early numbers were . . . sewn into grey Turner hand-made paper wrappers . . . [and] had the number and the recipient[']s name printed as part of the colophon".) Memoir first printed in The Dublin Magazine, April-June 1929. Tancrède Martel (né Joseph François Eugène Napoléon Gras, 1856-1928), "poet, novelist, historian, playwright", was "found dead in his lodging. His death was said to be due to cold and lack of food. The coverings on his bed were thin and mean and his feet were bare . . . That a man who had worked so hard and long at his craft should thus give up the ghost, destitute and forsaken, stirred the public imagination, at least for a moment . . . Till the war, and for a little while afterwards, Tancrède Martel managed to live on what he earned by writing for the newspapers. Then one day it was decided that the newspapers must be remodelled to suit the tastes of a new and Americanized generation, and a number of heads were sacrificed to make room for more spicy performers, 'live wires,' goats with 'pep.' Tancrède Martel was one of the first to be kicked out, because there was nothing to fear from him.". Seller Inventory # E100087
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