THE “FIRST QUEER GUIDE TO LONDON” PRY, Paul [Pseud, Thomas BURKE] For your Convenience. A learned Dialogue, Instructive to all Londoners & London Visitors, Overheard in the Thélème Club and Taken down Verbatim. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd, 1937 Small 8vo., original sea green publisher’s cloth, decorated with device in navy blue to upper board, and lettered typographically to spine; map endpapers printed in red showing central London, including Green Park, Oxford Street and Buckingham Palace along with 50 different public restrooms; together in the exceedingly rare unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (3s. 6d. net to front flap), printed in red; pp. [viii], 71, [i]; text printed in black throughout, with decorative title page replicating the upper panel of the dustwrapper, and three further vignettes, all by Philip Gough; a very good copy, with some darkening to edges of boards, and sunning to spine tips, which are also lightly pushed; internally for the most part clean, with some light offsetting to p. [i] and [lxxii]; light spotting to the prelims, and just beginning to crack at gutter facing p. 1, with a little webbing showing beneath, but holding firm; the wrapper, seldom found at all, is here present in good condition; completely unrepaired or restored, both panels and spine toned, with darkening particularly affecting the backstrip; rubbing, nicks and chips to all ends of folds and spine; a 2cm closed tear running in to the front panel; the front flap beginning to split at fold, but holding; and a couple of discrete internal tape repairs; rare thus. First edition, first printing of this pinnacle work, labelled by some as ‘the first queer guide to London’. Thomas Burke was born in 1886, and published his first work, ‘The Bellamy Diamonds’, in 1901. It was not until 1916, however, when he published ‘Limehouse Nights’, that he began to receive greater critical acclaim. The book, a collection of short stories centring around Chinese immigrants, earned him the nickname ‘the laureate of London's Chinatown’. Spurred on by the (somewhat controversial) fame, Burke continued to write on the subject of London and its environs, and increasingly began to incorporate the city’s homosexual communities. In 1922 he published The London Spy, openly describing the existence of such relationships thus: "Only in the misty corners of the thickening streets…can [homosexual couples] attain the solitude they seek…For the young lover…the street is more private than the home." His pseudonym, Paul Pry, is likely taken from John Poole’s 1825 farce where the protagonist, going by the same name, deliberately leaves his umbrella behind in a series of locations so that he might return to the scene and eavesdrop on conversations. The similarity between these two characters is, of course, obvious. Fifteen years after The London Spy, For your Convenience was published, somewhat bafflingly, by Routledge. The guide takes as its subject two members of the Thélème Club, Mr. Mumble and the ‘doyen’ of the club, who meet over a copy of the Sanitary World and Drainage Observer. Their discussion turns to the subject of where ‘relief’ may be found in London, supposedly after excessive consumption of tea or lager. They continue to discuss “places of that kind which have no attendants” and which “afford excellent rendezvous to people who wish to meet out of doors and yet escape the eye of the Busy [policemen]”. The book ends when the pair retire to the bathroom together (“Lead on, my boy, lead on…”). The illustrations, including the highly important endpaper maps, have here been provided by the illustrator Philip Gough (1908-1956), and bear a striking resemblance to the work of Rex Whistler. Comical maps such as these were highly popular at the time, with this particular example featuring an elephant in Regent’s Park, a mermaid in the Thames, and two men proudly brandishing toilet brushes in the corners of the margins. Unprecedented predominantly because of its early publication date, this fascinating and important guide outlines, through suggestion and innuendo, where men could meet other like-minded men in an era when homosexuality was still illegal, both in public and in private. Rare indeed in the dustwrapper.