From a Friend; Books Pym Read

From my dear friend; we call each other "Les Petites Nerdettes:"

In Hazel Holt's biography of Pym I learned about two books Barbara P. and her friends not only liked, but got into, to the extent of tracking down all sorts of info on the authors, going to places where they'd lived, etc. I decided to order both, used from amazon, and see why she liked them.
The first was Denton Welch's Maiden Voyage. Welch had had a rather tragic life and was dead in his 30s by the time Pym et al. read his work, and looked ascetic, scholarly, and interesting in his photos. Those are the only reasons I can see why the Pym circle liked this book. It's about a teenager who runs away from private school and gets to go to China with his grandfather....should be lively, right? Instead it's purely aesthetic and amoral. It consists mostly of the protagonist's descriptions of exotic, rare, beautiful collectors' objets d'art which he mainly went to China to obtain. He has no human feelings for anybody, no warmth or fondness whatsoever, actually commits cruelty to animals, is not attracted to males or females, and shows no interest in anything but himself and precious objects until literally the last two pages of the book, when he is somewhat sad to be parting from a female friend (not girlfriend). It's as if Aubrey Beardsley wrote a novel.
The other was fantastic and wonderful and if you haven't read it, READ IT!!! it's The Brontes Went to Woolworth's by Rachel Ferguson. I won't summarize it as I suspect you've read it. If not, details on request. I now want to read everything this writer wrote