The gadfly and the spy
Sir: In his most interesting article about The Gadfly (17 May) Tibor Szamuely gives a some- what exaggerated impression of the extent to which the book and its author were unknown, before he wrote, in 'non-communist' circles. Two years ago, the journal of the National Book League carried an article about Ethel Voynich and her works, by R. M. Fox, and I followed this up with a letter about the popu- larity of The Gadfly in Russia. The readership of Books is, I think, mainly 'non-communist.'
Far from having 'faded from sight early in the century,' Mrs Voynich published Chopin's Letters in 1932 and Put Off Thy Shoes in 1946. Both books are in the British Museum cata- logue. Nor were Russians, prior to 1955, under the delusion that she had faded away some time before the First World War. The article about her in the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia, second edition, volume eight, published in 1951, men- tions the publication of Put Off Thy Shoes, and treats the author as a person still alive.
Mrs Voynich was indeed 'nee Boole.' Her father was Professor George Boole, the distin- guished logician and father of Boolean algebra, of which we hear so much nowadays in con- nection with computers. She was a niece of Colonel Everest, after whom the mountain is named. Her husband, Wilfrid Voynich, was a well-known London dealer in rare books.
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