Pom Harrington inspects a rare first edition of Beckett’s first novel, published by George Routledge, London, 1938.
Murphy is recognized now as one of the greatest comic novels in the language, but most of the established UK publishing houses refused the book until George Reavey approached Herbert Read, chief reader of literature for Routledge, who published the book in their short-lived series of international fiction.
This is a first issue, in the smooth green cloth with gilt title. An unimpeachable copy, in a fine jacket, fine condition. Extremely rare in the dust jacket.
Gustave Doré’s illustrations of Victorian London are not only singularly beautiful, but revealed to his contemporaries the harsh reality of life in this vibrant city. Although it was not a depiction of London which was received well by British critics, the Frenchman succeeded in creating a timeless vision of the city before him.
Doré’s career began at the young age of fifteen, when he began working as a caricaturist for the French newspaper Le Journal pour Rire. This job launched the career of the young artist, and he gained a foothold in the world of illustration by winning commissions for scenes from books by Rabelais, Balzac, Milton and Dante.
In 1853, Doré began to expand his reach to the United Kingdom, as he was asked to illustrate the works of Lord Byron. This led to additional work for English publishers, including producing illustrations for an English language Bible. Doré’s international renown developed further after he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The resulting images of the knight and his squire became so well-known that they continue to shape ideas of the physical “look” of the characters for stage and film directors, as well as artists alike.
A major exhibition of his work appeared in London in 1867, and later the Doré Gallery opened in Bond Street. Doré’s rich and lavish style was a hit with London society, while his characteristic touches of grotesque fantasy appealed to the Victorian gothicism. His popularity was so great that he employed a team of forty wood engravers to complete his commissions.
Two years later, Doré met Blanchard Jerrold, who suggested that they work together to produce a comprehensive portrait of London. Jerrold had been inspired by The Microcosm of London, produced by Rudolph Ackermann, William Pyre and Thomas Rowlandson in 1808. Doré agreed, signing a five-year contract with the publishers Grant & Co., spending three months of the year in London and receiving the vast salary of £100,000 per year for the project.
The completed volume, published in 1872, contained 180 engravings by Doré and discursive letters by Jerrold. Despite the work being a joint endeavour, it was Doré’s contribution which received the most attention. The illustrator employed a slightly different style for this venture, adopting a greater sense of realism to fully bring the reader inside his vision of London, including astonishing imaginings of the city’s future.
Critics of the time were, however, unsure; realism was less relished when depicting controversial subject matter. They disliked Doré’s focus on the poverty within the city, and he was accused by The Art Journal of “inventing rather than copying”. In contrast, Jerrold’s letters were devoid of similar social criticism, but despite this, they were seen as being unable to live up to the illustrations.
Despite the criticisms, the book nevertheless enjoyed commercial success, and the pair planned to work on another volume, this time focussing on Paris. It was not to be: Doré died in 1883, and Jerrold began to work on a biography of him, but he too died before it’s completion.
Adam Douglas presents this privately printed edition of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence, from Cranwell in 1926. This edition is also known as the “Subscribers edition”.
In a letter to George Bernard Shaw, Lawrence described Seven Pillars as an effort to combine ‘record of fact’ and ‘work of art’, “to make history an imaginative thing” (Karachi, 7/5/28), as Lawrence James, in his ODNB biography of him puts it, Lawrence created, “ a personal, emotional narrative of the Arab revolt in which reveals how by sheer willpower he made history. It was a testimony to his vision and persistence and a fulfilment of his desire to write an epic which might stand comparison in scale and linguistic elegance with his beloved Morte d’Arthur and C. M. Doughty’s Arabia Deserta. Subtitled ‘A triumph’, its climax is the Arab liberation of Damascus, a victory which successfully concludes a gruelling campaign and vindicates Lawrence’s faith in the Arabs. In a way Seven Pillars is a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress, with Lawrence as Christian, a figure sustained by his faith in the Arabs, successively overcoming physical and moral obstacles”.
Illustrated with 66 plates printed by Whittingham & Griggs, including frontispiece portrait of Feisal by Augustus John, many coloured or tinted, 4 of them double-page, by Eric Kennington, William Roberts, Augustus John, William Nicholson, Paul Nash and others, 4 folding colour-printed maps, that is 2 maps duplicated, rather than the 3 called for by O’Brien, laid down on linen, 58 illustrations in text, one coloured, by Roberts, Nash, Kennington, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Gertrude Hermes and others. Historiated initials by Edward Wadsworth printed in red and black.
Our full selection of the works of T. E. Lawrence can be found by clicking here.
First edition of this classic comedy, The Cocktail Party.
A major association copy from T. S. Eliot to Ezra Pound, with the author’s presentation inscription to the front free endpaper, “Ez from O. Possum 6. iii. 50.”
This remarkable survival from the chaotic years of Pound’s incarceration at St Elizabeth’s hospital in Washington DC was part of a small group of books which passed through the hands of Eileen Lane Kinney, a member of the inner circle of modernist artists and writers based in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.
More information on this edition can be found by clicking here.
Pom Harrington inspects this first American edition, first printing, first issue of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The traditional issue points on this book are now known to be excessively complicated.
The first printing of 30,000 copies was done using electrotype plates, produced simultaneously on different presses, hence minor variations within the first printing due to damaged plates.
Of the traditional issue points, this copy has the cancel p. 283 with the suggestive illustration cleaned up, as always in cloth copies. The frontispiece is in the first state with the table cloth visible and unsigned on the finished edge of the bust, but this was separately printed and inserted in copies at random, and so has no bearing on priority. The final digit in the page number 155 is from a different fount.
Copies were issued in leather bindings (sheep or three-quarters morocco), in blue cloth for those who wanted it uniform with Tom Sawyer and, as here, in green cloth. There is no priority between them: all were first available to the public on the same day in February 1885.
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