8vo. [8], 71pp. With a frontispiece and numerous illustrations in the text. Original publisher's green cloth, lettered and decorated in navy. with Philip Gough's frontispiece and illustrations throughout. Photocopy of the original dustwrapper wrapped round.

Widely accepted as London's first 'Gay Guide' - published just three years after homosexuality was criminalised in the United Kingdom. Burke's sardonic dialogue between two characters provides the reader with a coded, comprehensive exploration of London's subterranean scene. Purportedly a humorous guide to public toilets ('conveniences') of the capital, the narrative expands its advice to 'the provincial towns in England, [where] a safe tip is to look for a statue of Queen Victoria', and other more general notes such as 'the etiquette observed between the local fire engine at a fire, and the outlying engines called into assist. Garages, too, are usually ready to accede to any courteously worded appeal'.

As one of the great Edwardian social observers, Thomas Burke (1886-1945) writes with both a precise humour and wry observation on class and society, as well as giving a topographical tour of the city's potential rendezvous points; 'Places are most frequent in those districts where there is a large consumption of tea and beer; least frequent in those districts where sherry and claret rule.'

Burke is best remembered for Limehouse Nights (1916), a collection of stories centred on life in the poverty-stricken Limehouse district of London, and his character Quong Lee, who continued to appear throughout his other works on the East End. As well as his fiction and poetry, Burke wrote extensively on London, on the nightlife, the inns, the east end. He rarely published under a pseudonym; the use of one here indicates he was starkly aware of the dangers of publication.