The Mandrake Press was a British small press

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 founded by Edward Goldston and P. R. Stephensen

P. R. Stephensen

Percy Reginald Stephensen was an Australian writer, publisher and political activist.He was born in Maryborough, Queensland. He was nicknamed "Inky", and attended the University of Queensland...

 in 1929. In 1930 the company had financial problems and a consortium led by Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

 formed Mandrake Press Ltd. The new consortium was equally unsuccessful and the company was dissolved in 1930.

In eighteen months The Mandrake Press published over 30 items including D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

, The Paintings of D H Lawrence together with works by Liam O'Flaherty

Liam O'Flaherty

Liam O'Flaherty was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer and a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance, born August 28, 1896, died September 7, 1984.-Biography:...

, Rhys Davies

Rhys Davies

Rhys Davies was a Welsh novelist and short story writer, who wrote in the English language....

, Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

, Peter Warlock

Peter Warlock

Peter Warlock was a pseudonym of Philip Arnold Heseltine , an Anglo-Welsh composer and music critic. He used the pseudonym when composing, and is now better known by this name....

 under the pseudonym Rab Noolas, S. S. Koteliansky

S. S. Koteliansky

S.S. Koteliansky, or Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky, was born in the small Jewish shtetl of Ostropol in the Ukraine, where his first language almost certainly was Yiddish. He was educated and attended university in Russia.-Biography:By 1911, he had moved to London, where he became a great friend...

, Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

, Thomas Burke

Thomas Burke (author)

Thomas Burke was a British author. He was born in Eltham, London.His first successful publication was Limehouse Nights , a collection of stories centered around life in the poverty-stricken Limehouse district of London...

, Cecil Roth

Cecil Roth

Cecil Roth , was a British Jewish historian.He was educated at Merton College, Oxford and returned to Oxford as reader in Jewish Studies from 1939 to 1964...

, Beresford Egan

Beresford Egan

Beresford Egan was born in London and raised from the age of five in South Africa. He returned to London in July 1926 after spending two years as a precocious sports cartoonist on the Rand Daily Mail. He quickly established himself in the artistic and literary atmosphere of London. He not only...

, W. J. Turner, Brinsley MacNamara

Brinsley MacNamara

Brinsley MacNamara was an Irish writer.Born as John Weldon near Delvin, County Westmeath, he worked for the Abbey Theatre from 1909, and later as the registrar of the National Gallery of Ireland....

, Edgell Rickword

Edgell Rickword

John Edgell Rickword, MC was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s.-Early life:He was born in Colchester, Essex...

, Richard Middleton, V. V. Rozanov, Philip Owens

Philip Owens

Philip Owens was an English poet and novelist of the 1920s and 1930s. He appears in the 1930 anthology European Caravan, edited by Samuel Putnam, which also introduced much of the world to Jacob Bronowski, William Empson, and Samuel Beckett. He was a frequent contributor to Jack Lindsay's...

, Vernon Knowles, and others.

At the 1985 Cambridge University Exhibition of the works of The Mandrake Press it was believed that no copies of the Book of Tobit

Book of Tobit

The Book of Tobit is a book of scripture that is part of the Catholic and Orthodox biblical canon, pronounced canonical by the Council of Carthage of 397 and confirmed for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent...

, a part of the Catholic bible, had been produced even though the book had been announced and a prospectus issued. Since 1985 three copies have been discovered — one in an Australian library and two in private collections.

Further reading

• Evans, Dave (2007). The History of British Magic After Crowley: Kenneth Grant, Amado Crowley, Chaos Magic, Satanism, Lovecraft, the Left Hand Path, Blasphemy and Magical Morality. Hidden Design Ltd. ISBN 0955523702