The Bodley Head
The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name was used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books from 1987 to 2008. In April 2008, it was revived as an adult non-fiction imprint within Random House's CCV division.
History
Originally John Lane and Elkin Mathews — The Bodley Head was a partnership set up in 1887 by John Lane (1854–1925) and Elkin Mathews (1851–1921), to trade in antiquarian books in London. It took its name from a bust of Sir Thomas Bodley, the eponymist of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, above the shop door. Lane and Matthews began in 1894 to publish works of ‘stylish decadence’, including the notorious literary periodical The Yellow Book. Also notable amongst Bodley Head's pre-Great War books were the two volume sets: Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1910 and later editions, selling over fifty thousand copies), and Immanuel Kant, both by Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Podcasts:
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by Incredible String Band
The Head
by: Incredible String BandOnly a palace with interior doors
Well painted well gargoyled with multiple floors
Two windows let free this projector machine
and the magical world here appears on the screen
My servants attend me with tricks of the senses
The past and the future and similar tenses
and on platters of air they convey me my measure
both gladness and sorrow, I lack not for treasure
The lord and his lady are seated within
In the court of the mind where the song does begin
The song is as fine is as fine is as follows
The song does continue through measureless hollows
that sink from the level of personal being
through caverns of darkness where dragons
are dwelling
The mountains above them are raised at my calling
Where the apples are ripe or the rain is a-falling
In ships of white vision I sail the horizon
where three spinners stand beyond the
horizon under the tree of the apples of beauty
I watch them arranging my days and tomorrows
The song is as fine is as fine as it follows
I stood on the beach where the moon was a-curling
Laughed on the wings of the sea birds calling
I loved when sweet Venus a lover did bring me
I cried when sweet Saturn and Jupiter moved us
and all of my servants were fighting their brothers
And the lord and the lady they hated each other
Till the spinners arose with their work on their fingers
Commanding the presence of Heavenly singers
That spoke of the silence so soon to be coming
When all would be still in the wonderful palace
The peace is not stillness but peacefully changing
This hope is the hope of the man on the gallows
The song is as fine is as fine is as follows
The infant I was in the womb of my mother
White sperm I was in the loins of my father
Before that I swam in the oceans of nowhere
Where the fish are as fine as the colour of colours
Where waves are the message of centuries rolling
Where wind is the breath of the Holy Creator
Where no ship sails but only the ocean
Where all the rivers grow mighty with showing
And crowned with the gifts of the myriad valleys
Return with a sigh to the sea of the coming
Forever and ever and ever and ever be glad O be