Catalogue 1: Rara Eros 16th-20th centuries

by Stephen J. Gertz

Booktryst is pleased to announce Catalogue 1: Rara Eros 16th-20th centuries.

Featuring 60 items, including books and prints, it is illustrated with over 82 images, the majority in full color. The catalogue was designed by Poltroon Press in Berkeley, CA.

Within you will see many scarce and obscure books that have not been seen in decades if not longer, artist proofs, and titlepages and illustrations published for the first time outside of the books themselves.

You may view the catalogue as a double-page spread PDF (recommended) here.

If you prefer a single-page PDF you can view it here.

It pains me that given the current cultural climate I must offer a trigger warning: sexually explicit imagery (by respected artists mostly working anonymously or under pseudonym) is present within the catalogue. So, gird your loins, take a tip from Dante and "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

A print version is available in a strictly limited edition of 50 copies only. It is 11 x 8 1/2 in. 32 pp. on 70# matte Titan white, 82 color and black and white illustrations, permabound, full color cover on 10 pt C1S/white stock with matte layflat lamination. Because of the nature of the material, its scarcity, the rigorous descriptions, informative and engaging annotations, and exceptional design, this catalogue will become collectable.

Purchase a copy of Rara Eros in print for only $55.

Bad Afternoon of a Fawn: Bambi's Dark Secret Revealed

by Stephen J. Gertz

Thumper: Psst!  Hey, you! Who's your daddy?

Bambi: The Great Prince stag.

Thumper: No, I mean the guy who wrote you.

Bambi: Walt Disney?

Thumper: No, he adapted you. I mean the guy who brought you into the world.

Bambi: I don't know.

Thumper: Your author was Felix Salten, an Austrian Jew born in Hungary in 1869. He wrote you in German in 1923 and you were translated into English in 1928.

First edition (1923)

First edition in English (1928).

Thumper: His real name was Siegmund Saltzmann and his family moved to Vienna when he was an infant because the city granted Jews full citizenship in 1867; life was much easier there. When his father went broke he quit school and became an insurance salesman but, with an inch to write, began submitting poems and reviews to local journals. Soon, he was part of the Jung Wien (Young Vienna) movement and writing assignments came his way. In 1901 he published his first collection of short stories and afterward produced an average of a book a year - novels, short stories, essays, plays, you name it - under the pseudonym Felix Salten.

In 1906 he anonymously wrote a scandalous book.

Bambi: Scandalous? 

Thumper: Oh, yes. The book was Josefine Mutzenbacher, oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne, von ihr selbst erzählt.

Bambi: What's that mean?

Thumper: Josephine Mutzenbacher, or The Story of a Viennese Whore, as told by Herself. It's written in a very realistic and explicit manner.

Bambi: No! I'm shocked. Say it isn't so.

First edition.

Thumper: It is! It's a wild thing, privately published in an edition of 1000 copies for subscribers only and an instant hit. It's the most popular German erotic novel of all time. 

Thumper: It was first translated into English c. 1920s in a clandestine edition - a horrible job, all sex no style, Salten's humor lost as well as his voice, the rich flavor of the prose, and spirit of contemporary Vienna. This translation has been reprinted countless times; avoid it like a forest fire.

Thumper: The only translation into English that's worth reading is that done by Rudolf Schleifer in 1967 for Brandon House Library Editions out of North Hollywood, California. It was commissioned by Brian Kirby, the imprint's editor, who is considered to be the American Maurice Girodias due to his taste in fine erotica and boldness in publishing the finest erotic literature and translating for the first time into English many European erotic novels.

This edition bears an introduction by Hilary E. Holt, Ph.D., who did the translation under the pseudonym Rudolf Schleifer. Holt, an Austrian emigré to Los  Angeles, was a "sad, old man" according to Kirby, and a former professor living in a small, dumpy apartment in Hollywood  who translated for Kirby under the pseudonyms Rudolf Schleifer, Andre Gilbert, and Franz Mecklenberg. He  provided Kirby with many German erotic works from his personal collection, including Josefine Mutzenbacher. Holt also wrote introductions for the imprint, sometimes under his own name (when he'd done the book's translation under one of his pseudonyms), sometimes under the pseudonyms John S. Murphy, James E. White, Albert W. Lowy, or Allan D. Warner.

In his introduction Holt recalled a conversation he had with Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), the Vienesse novelist, about Mutzenbacher.

"Stefan Zweig was the only mortal who worked-up enough courage to ask the alleged ghost-writer of the Mutzenbacher Memoirs, Felix Salten, whether he had actually authored the book. The famous author of Bambi, et al, Zweig's senior by twelve years, was a very serious gentleman of dignified bearing which definitely did not encourage any indiscreet questions. Zweig mentinoed this episode to me, 37 years ago, in the following words:

"'Salten and I were discussing the literary phenomenon of famous authors writing bawdy stories containing four letter words and describing sexual bouts with Rabelaisian frankness. Salten reminded me of the poem Der Herr von Iste by Goethe ["Mr. Iste" is Goethe's penis, who refused to cooperate when Goethe, age 78, met a willing wench]. I, in turn, mentioned Mark Twain's bawdy story dealing with the court of Elizabeth I, 1601.

"'I thought this a good occasion to question Salten about his alleged authorship of the Mutzenbacher story. He smiled mysteriously and said, 'If I deny it, you won't believe me, and if I admit it, you'll think I am teasing you. So...' and he shrugged. To me this was a badly disguised admission. Knowing Salten well, I realized he'd have become very angry at being asked such a question unless he was the author.'"

Bambi: I'm plotzing; I need to lie down. It's like discovering daddy was an axe-murderer.

Thumper: More like a pimp. 

Bambi: I feel corrupted.

Thumper: You are. Blame it on Walt Disney. You were born a roe-deer. Disney played Frankenstein and turned you into a white-tailed deer.

Bambi: I feel tainted.

Thumper: You feel tainted? In the book I'm Friend Hare. Disney turned me into Thumper, a rabbit with paw pads. Rabbits don't have paw pads. I'm a freak.

Felix Salten reading to his children.

"The saying is, that young whores become old, religious crones, but that was not my case. I became a whore at an early age and experienced everything a woman can ... in bed, on chairs, tables, standing against walls, benches, lying on the grass, in dark hall-ways, in private bedchambers, on railroad trains, in lodging houses, in jail; in fact in every conceivable place where it was possible...but I have no regrets. I am along in years now...the enjoyment which my sex afforded me is fast disappearing. I am rich but faded, and often being very lonesome, but it never entered my mind, although in the past years I was religious... to now do penance."

That's the opening to the lousy first edition in English.

"When I remember the old popular saying that young whores turn into religious bigots when they become old, I must claim to be one of the few exceptions. Yes, I am old now, and have lost my good looks, and though I am wealthy, I often suffer from loneliness; but I don't regret my past one little bit and don't feel I have to do penance. I believe in God, but I dislike making a show of religion which is a private concern.

"My sex education started very early in life, and theory and practice were never separated. I have experienced everything that a woman can in male company, be it in bed, on the floor, on tables or chairs, leaning against the walls of old houses, in the open field, in carriages and on trains, in military barracks, in prisons and bordellos."

That's the opening as translated by Holt. Quite a difference!

As "translated" by Paul J. Gillette in 1970 for Holloway House in Los Angeles it isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Gillette was notorious for using existing translations of erotic novels, paraphrasing them, and adding graphic scenes not present in the original.

By the way, the memoir is fiction but Josefine Mutzenbacher was real. Born in 1859 in Ottakring, Vienna's 17th district, by the 1890s she had amassed enough wealth to buy a huge, ranch-like estate in the Austrian province of Carinthia. 

Bambi: How do you know so much about books? You must read a lot.

Thumper: Constantly. You know what they say - rabbits do it like bunnies.

Bambi: Thumper the book humper?

Thumper: You're not as innocent as you look, boy. I presume you've experienced sex.

Bambi: I'm only in it for the doe.

Thumper: Ultimately, so was Josephine Mutzenbacher.

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[SALTEN, Felix]. Josefine Mutzenbacher oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne von ihr selbst erzählt. [N.p., n.p.] Privatdruck, 1906. First edition, limited to 1000 copies for subscribers only. Octavo. 332 pp.  In the original silk envelope.

Hayn-Gotendorf VIII, 477: "An extremely naturalistic portrayal of the life of a prostitute seeking Sotadicum."

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Image of title page to first edition of Josefine Mutzenbacher courtesy of  Buchauktionen Hauff & Auvermann of Berlin, offering a copy in its Sale 71, Moderne Literatur und Kunst, October 24, 2013 (featuring an excellent selection of fine erotica), with our thanks. The lower margin of the title page has been Photoshopped to remove an inventory ticket.

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Stunning Modernist Posters At Swann Galleries

by Stephen J. Gertz

Today, Monday, May 13, 2013, Swann Auction Galleries is hosting a spectacular graphic arts sale, an extravaganza of Modernist posters, 253 lots of some of the most visually arresting images you'll ever see. It's so impressive that Booktryst is devoting this week to highlights from the auction.

"His name should have an important place in the history of posters because of his innovative aesthetics." So notes the Bénézit Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs of Orsi, of whom little is known despite the fact that he designed as many as 1,000 posters. Bénézit  praises Orsi's sense of simplification, his bright colors and his creative ideas.

Philips Electronics was one of his primary clients. Here is Lampe Flourescente, printed by Bedos & Cie, Paris, c. 1940. As Nick Lowry, head of posters at Swann (and now its president), notes "the pointillist effect he creates to advertise a fluorescent light bulb is a classic example of the extent of his talent. The diagonal of the bulb itself, the unique handling of the coloring, the typography and the overall feeling of fluorescence make this an exceptional image."

Charles Verschuuren Jr. (1899-1955) was an illustrator, cartoonist and part-time painter born in the Netherlands. He designed over 100 posters before emigrating with his family to New York City in 1922. Once settled he contributed many illustrations to the Brooklyn Eagle Sunday Magazine. He also designed posters for the WPA and briefly worked for Disney.  This poster, designed c. 1917, was for Drukkerij Kotting, the Amsterdam printer for whom Verschuuren did all of his design work before moving to the United States.

Sven Hendriksen (1890-1935) designed this poster, a bold image amplified by shadow effect, in 1934 for the moderate left-wing Danish Worker's Party, which published Social-Demokraten, a newspaper printed by Jensens Trykkerier of Copenhagen. Henriksen was a self-taught artist turned graphic designer who created this poster for the paper's 60th  anniversary. I'm particularly attracted to the image because if its implicit subtext of reading as a political act.

Otto Baumberger (1889-1961) was one of the most prolific Swiss poster designers, with well over two hundred designs to his credit. Beginning in 1917 he regularly worked for upscale Swiss clothing retailer PKZ.

As Lowry notes, "this poster [created in 1923] is not only the best he produced for the company but is also an icon in poster history. The tweed coat is rendered in near-photographic perfection to the point where you can practically feel the fabric. Baumberger took a totally new approach to advertising by ingeniously incorporating the poster's text into the image in the form of the label in the coat.

"With this poster Baumberger cemented his role as master of the 'Object Poster,' (a title he earned four years earlier with a classic image of a top hat), and began the trend of 'New Objectivity' within the Swiss school of Graphic Design. A sensation from the day it was issued, this image remains compelling and proves to be one of the finest of the PKZ posters."

Pierre Segogne (?-1958) was a prolific poster designer for the cinema yet he and his work have been largely been forgotten and certainly under appreciated. But for a short period during the 1920s he was extremely inventive and developed a singular style using a stencil technique, applying colors using either a sponge or a roll. This gave his posters a singular appearance.

This poster was designed in 1923 for Diany Dorange, a circus performer with a popular equestrian act. A program from 1925 bills her as the star performer at l'Empire, one of the largest Parisian Music Halls. Gitty-up.

This poster for Vitalis - Les Rayons Qui Guérissent was designed by Henry Farion (?-1991) c. 1935.

Nikola Tesla and George Lakhovsky (who, as everyone knows, invented the MWO-multi wave oscillator; it wasn't, as I presumed, Moe Howard; thanks, Nick Lowry, for setting me straight) were celebrated in France; the use of electricity for curing all manner of physical woe was widespread. Electrotherapy kits for home use, such as those produced by Vitalis, were sold in sets that came in their own cases with separate attachments suited to treat different parts of the body. Such electrotherapy kits were prevalent in America until they were banned in the 1930s.

American men of a certain age will scratch their heads and let the dandruff fall where it may: in the U.S., Vitalis was a popular hair tonic offered in barbershops - along with Brylcreem, Wildroot Cream-Oil, Kreml, and Dapper Dan - as an alternative to "greasy kid-stuff," as its advertisements characterized the competition. With a couple of toes in the grave I confess to having used Vitalis and Brylcreem as a '50s kid in a desperate attempt to keep my curly hair straight and flat on my scalp and forestall its inevitable explosion into a Jew-'Fro for as long as possible. It's a little known fact that the trend for long, curly hair during the 1960s was established for my personal benefit, Harpo Marx my hairstyle model. 

Nicholas D. Lowry, the popular appraiser on Antiques Roadshow who enjoys "drinking scotch while listening to heavy metal music" (AR bio),  appears to be a fan of Vitalis - the hair tonic not the electro-stimulator.

Just who F. Tarazona - the designer of the above celebration, c. 1925 ala Weimar, of 1920s music hall decadence and excess - was remains a mystery, as does the specific location in Spain of Teatro Apolo - Velasco.

Be sure to stop by tomorrow when Booktryst continues its look at Modernist posters offered by Swann Auction Galleries.

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View the entire catalog in 3D here.
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All images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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Innocence Found in Scarce Dust Jacket

by Stephen J. Gertz

Take a good look; you'll likely never see another first edition copy of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Innocence (1920) in its scarce first state dust jacket in this condition ever again. It's usually lost along with the innocence of the age it illuminates, America in the 1870s and the Victorian social standards of contemporary New York high society.

When seen at all the first state dust jacket usually proclaims "Chips Ahoy!" It's a rare cookie without divots aplenty at spine ends and along the edges as if leaf-eating insects chomped a banquet.

First edition, first printing (with "1" on p. 365) copies without dust jacket currently go for $2250-$9000. Copies in the first state dust jacket cost considerably more. The copy under notice, for instance, is being offered by Peter Harrington at $31,400 (£20,000).  Prices are extremely sensitive to DJ condition. Another copy in the first state dust jacket with a chunks missing at the spine head and upper right corner sold for $23,500 not too long ago.

This copy has a Wharton signature tipped-in to a prelim leaf. Per usual with clipped and mounted autographs it adds little to the value of the book. Inscribed and signed copies of The Age of Innocence in any edition, however, are even rarer than copies in the first state dust jacket. Only one such copy has entered the marketplace within the last thirty years, currently offered by Charles Agvent for $31,250.

Put this dj on that inscribed copy and you'd have a lollipazooza, easily worth more than double the price of the two sold separately. It becomes a $75,000-$100,000 book, greater than the sum of its parts.

Clearly, this is one very expensive dust jacket. It's not in the same class as the DJ to The Great Gatsby, which can add up to $175,000 to the price of a first edition copy, but, like Gatsby in DJ, it remains highly scarce and desirable and thus highly susceptible to fraud, i.e. restoration without declaration. Dust jackets to The Age of Innocence that raise suspicion should be examined under black light to reveal evidence of not-so-divine intervention.

First state dust jacket points:

• Quotes on rear panel by Percy Lubbock pulled from The Novels of Edith Wharton, an article that originally appeared in the January 1915 issue of the Quarterly Review.

In the second state dust jacket, Lubbock's quotes are replaced by those by William Phelps that originally appeared in the New York Times review, October 17, 1920.

• The price on the jacket is $2.

“There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as major and Edith Wharton is one" (Gore Vidal).

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WHARTON, Edith. The Age of Innocence. New York: D. Appleton, 1920. First edition, first printing. Octavo. 364, [2] pp. Publisher's original red cloth. Original first state dust jacket.

Hart 814. Garrison 30.I.a.

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Images courtesy of Peter Harrington, with our thanks.

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Of related Interest:

The $175,000 Dust Jacket Comes To Auction.
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The Man In The Iron Mask Schleps 'Round The World

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Who was that masked man?"
"I don't know but I wanted to thank him."

On New Years Day, 1908, Harry Bensley (1876-1956), a well-to-do lone ranger involved in a £21,000 wager  that he could walk around the world in an iron mask and marry without revealing his identity, embarked on his journey, a trek that began at home in Great Britain and supposedly took him through China and Persia before the outbreak of WWI brought his global schlep to a screeching halt in Genoa, Italy.

The terms of the wager - purportedly made between J.P. Morgan and Lord Lonsdale with Harry the volunteer test subject - stipulated that Bensley begin his journey with a single pound note and a change of underwear through 169 British cities and towns in a specific order;  he would have to collect a signature from a local prominent resident to prove that he had been there. After that he would begin a tour of eighteen countries in a pre-specified order. He was to support himself along the way by selling postcards such as this one, which portrays him in his knight's helmet with printed sign in lieu of  plume, sweater embroidered on the rear with the legend, "Walking Round the World Masked," a custom pram which should have been called "The Orient Non-Express" but wasn't, and paid attendant in matching sweater whose name is unknown but whom we shall call Tonto to our masked Kimosabe.

Some people, of skeptical turn of mind, claimed that Bensley never left England. Oh, cruel nattering by nincompoops of little faith!

But here's the proof that Bensley, in full metal masquerade from the neck up, and with pram and attendant present, perambulated to a photography studio for a series of promotional mug shots. Whether he ever actually left the studio and crossed the English Channel to promenade through Europe and Asia is another story.

One can't help but wonder if he wound up in the Bastille, courtesy of the King of France, for claiming to be the King's twin brother, his personal attendant, The One Musketeer, in the cell next door. Bensley didn't but his investments in Russia were wiped-out during the Bolshevik Revolution, he was left destitute, and worked low-paying unskilled jobs until his death.

Oh, ladies of too much faith! Harry supposedly received over 200 marriage proposals during his voyage from damsels who had never laid eyes upon his visage and didn't care. His wife, whom he  married c. 1898, ten years before the wager, was, presumably, not amused. But, then again, maybe she was. She knew what he looked like behind the wrought iron veil.
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BENSLEY, Harry. Unused original photo-postcard, approx. 5-1/4 x 3-3/8 inches. N.p. {England], c. 1908
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Image courtesy of Garrett Scott, The Bibliophagist, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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A Bonet Lion Binding That Roars

by Stephen J. Gertz

This majestically leonine binding wrought by Paul Bonet [1889-1971] in 1969 for a copy of the 1937 Raoul Dufy-illustrated edition of Daudet's Les Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon (Paris: Scripta et Picta) is being offered by Christie's-Paris in their Importants Livres Anciens, Livres d'Artistes et Manuscrits sale on Monday, October 29, 2012.

It is estimated to sell for $14,000 - $20.000 (€10,000 - €15,000).

Based in Paris, Bonet was one of the great bookbinders of the twentieth century.

"Paul Bonet does his designing in his apartment on the Rive Gauche and in 1938 had an atelier where workmen carried out his designs under his supervision. [He] evolved an entirely new style of book decoration - totally original, amazingly clever, and really 'modern' in spirit, with a mouvement radiant. His great swirling designs are so ingeniously drawn that, although they are carried out on a flat surface, they represent a third dimension purely through an illusion created by the drawing, and not by means of an alteration in the surface of the cover as was practiced by Creuzevault. The tooling on his bindings is faultless and brilliant. It has a machinelike precision with a quality that can only be achieved by 'striking' each tool separately by hand. Paul Bonet, in my opinion, is without a rival today" (Diehl, Edith. Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique [1946], p. 108).

When the king of beasts met the king of binders the result was a victory for both.

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Booktryst has 32 great posts on fine bookbinding in our archive. Enter "bindings" in our search box to access them all.
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Great Literary Faces 1938-1939

by Stephen J. Gertz

 "For a writer, his portrait is the only link he can establish with his readers. When we read a book whose content moves us, we are interested to look at the author's face, which is generally printed on the jacket since the publisher is aware of our wish to see if these features correspond to the idea we have formed of the author. This image is thus very important to the man of letters. He prefers a photographer in whom he can have confidence" (from Gisèle Freund: Photographer, 1985).

Simone de Beauvoir.

In 1977, German-born French photographer Gisele Freund (c.1908/12-2000) revisited portraits of ten men and women of letters, who originally sat for her in 1938-1939, for an edition limited to thirty-six copies of her work, Au pays de visages.

The writers were Colette, Virginia Woolf, André Gide, James Joyce,  Jean Cocteau, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sarte, André Malraux, Vita Sackville-West, and Silvia Beach's companion,  the poet, publisher, and proprietor of the famed bookshop La Maison des Amis des Livres (1915-1951), Adrienne Monnier.

Colette.

Freund printed the portraits using the dye-transfer process developed by Technicolor in 1928 and refined by them in 1932. Labor and time intensive, the process results in extraordinarily beautiful hues that can be hotly vivid or possess muted richness as no other; it is intense. Color photographs using the dye-transfer process are instantly recognizable as such, as are movies photographed in Technicolor.

James Joyce.

Gisele Freund was born into a Jewish family in Schöneberg, near Berlin. In 1928, her father bought her a Leica. She liked it and pursued photography as a hobby while studying sociology and literature. Some hobby: when the Nazis came to power the Freunds left Germany with Gisele smuggling out the portraits she had made of Hitler's political victims.

She studied at the Sorbonne and played chess with Walter Benjamin, who, while she was writing her dissertation, La Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle, at the Bibliothéque National,  was  also there, writing a study of Baudelaire. Her dissertation was published by Adrienne Monnier, who, along with Sylvia Beach, introduced Gisele to Paris' literary circle.

Virginia Woolf, in her London house, 1939.
She never saw the portrait, and later called Gisele a "devil woman."

After the war, Gisele worked as a free-lancer for Magnum Photos. Legendary photo-journalist Robert  "if your photographs aren't good enough you're not close enough" Capa, who had co-founded Magnum, told her "If you want to make money, give up your job as a reporter. It will earn you a good living, but you'll never get rich." 

During the 1970s, Gisele Freund toured Japan, the Near East, and the U.S., where, in 1977 K&S Laboratories in Chicago printed these great portraits, amongst the many dye-transfer photographs she took of writers and artists in pre-war Paris.

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FREUND, Gisele. Au pays des visages. Washington D.C.: [Harry H. Lunn Jr], 1977. One of thirty numbered copies of a total edition of thirty-six. Folio. Ten original dye transfer photographs, each signed by the artist in ink, and each loosely mounted (with hinged corners) on large rag mats. 

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Images courtesy of Ars Libri Ltd, currently offering this title, with our thanks.

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D-I-V-O-R-C-E or, John Milton on Splitsville

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1643, poet John Milton, who later wrote Paradise Lost, anonymously published The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, the first of four tracts he wrote 1643-1645 in support of divorce against Canon law, which he believed was contrary to the true meaning of Scripture and the Gospel. If a marriage was not working it was to the good of both sexes for it to be dissolved. His argument was that unsuitable unions of couples ‘chained unnaturally together’ should be broken on the grounds of incompatibility, a radical idea in its time. It shocked his contemporaries.

Divorce in 17th century England was against the law. You married for life, a holy bond that only God could break by calling one of the parties home. If the union was contentious it was a marriage to the death.

Milton had a stake in the issue.  In 1642, at age thirty-three, he married  a seventeen year old girl, Mary Powell. She soon deserted him to return to her parents. Divorce was impossible, divorce and remarriage doubly so. You could legally separate but never dissolve the union. The only out was a church annulment but that involved admitting that the marriage was never consummated,  the husband was impotent, or the wife frigid, each a major public embarrassment. He argued that neither ecclesiastic or civil powers held authority in matters of marriage and divorce; it was a a strictly private affair.

John Milton.

But only for the man. Milton had no interest in granting women the power to divorce their husbands. Yet his definition of marriage as something more than a union for procreation (or remedy against fornication) was wholly modern if one-sided: "the apt and cheerful conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evils of solitary life."

An unhappy couple, "mistak’n in their dispositions through any error, concealment, or misadventure"  was doomed to a "spight of antipathy to fadge together, and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomnes and despaire of all sociable delight." This violated  his belief in marriage as mutual companionship.

The 1643 first edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce sold out almost immediately; controversy then and now tends to promote sales. Attempts were made to ban the tract.  A second edition was issued in 1644, greatly enlarged by almost half and including a new Preface "To the Parliament of England with the Assembly." Two more editions appeared in 1645, reprints of the 1644 issue, one with an errata page, the other, possibly unauthorized, without one. The other three of Milton's Divorce tracts are The Judgment of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion. John Milton's model for the ideal marriage is manifest in the relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost (1667).

Gustave Doré, Adam and Eve in the Garden, Paradise Lost (1866).

In 1964, as the first kid on my block to come from what was then still quaintly called a "broken home," I was in the vanguard, a young, lone pioneer on the  frontier when the Greatest Generation decided things weren't so great and made a strategic retreat from the domestic battlefield to a separate peace. It was in the next year, 1965, that the divorce rate in the U.S. began its march toward doubling by 1975; I was an anxious point-man on recon before hostilities broke-out on a large scale.

Holy matrimony, Batman! In those days,  New York State, as so many others, made divorce a legal ordeal as wrenching as its emotional anguish. But there was an exotic, legit alternative. You could visit  pre-drug cartel Juarez in sunny Mexico, hang around for a few hours, have lunch. see the sights, pay a nominal court fee, and be granted a that's-all-there-is-to-it divorcio al vapor - evaporated nuptials. 

My mother was necessarily one such divorce tourist. I'm not sure whether it occurred during Mexico's Dia de los Muertos holiday but afterward my parents' marriage was officially dead and no one was celebrating except me. Consumed with guilt for bearing such a betraying sentiment (and for so much more), I  beat myself up like a human piñata for years afterward. And, in what became a family tradition, my own marriage ended in divorce, as did my sister's. For me, divorce was a rite of passage ceremony, an adult bar mizvah for the damned. When I walked out the door I dropped off a cliff.

Now, everybody's doing it; so what else is new? But forty-eight years ago my sister and I earned purple hearts for injuries incurred in the cross-fire, wounds that, for me, never bled until much later when the  effects of my parents' divorce finally spilled. When the  school psychologist - who I was sent to because I was truant for nearly three months straight - asked how I thought my parents' split affected me, I insouciantly replied, "not at all," the response of a kid who'd battened-down the hatches and hunkered-in until the storm passed but it never did.

As crippling as its aftermath was had my parents not split-up my outcome would have been so much worse before it got so much better. It might not have gotten better at all. I'm thankful to John Milton for his efforts at reformation.

In 1968, country-western diva Tammy Wynette spelled out what was still the broken love that dare not speak its name, below introduced by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, a married couple that only a six-shooter could separate but was never drawn and fired for the sake of their child, Trigger, who they stuffed as a keepsake after his death.

And now, as God said in Paradise Lost when He expelled Adam and Eve from  Eden, "Happy Trails!"*


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M[ILTON], J[ohn].  The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; restor'd to the good of both SEXES, from the bondage of CANON LAW, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the LAW and GOSPEL compar'd: wherein also are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not: now the second time revis'd and much augmented in two books: to the Parliament of England with the Assembly. London: Imprinted in the Year 1645.

Forth edition. Small quarto. [8], 72 pp, with the usual mispagination to pp. 69-78 in sheet G. Lackng errata.

Wing M2110. Coleridge, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library 17. Parker, Milton: A Biography, pp. 890-891.

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* Paradise Lost by John Milton. Newly Revised for a Popular Audience by T. Basil Leeves. Frostbite Falls: Wottsamatta U Press, 1989.
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Image of 1645 edition courtesy of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, currently offering this title, with our thanks.

Image of 1643 first edition courtesy of Rutgers University, with our appreciation.

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"One Of The Most Beautiful Books Ever Created" Reaps $415,937 At Sotheby's

by Stephen J. Gertz

CENDRARS, Blaise & DELAUNAY, Sonia.
La Prose du Transsibérian et de la Petite Jehanne de France.
Paris: Editions des Hommes Nouveaux, 1913.

Box (above) by Paul Bonet after Sonia Delaunay.

Est. at 40,000 - 60,000 EUR ($53,173 - $79, 972).
Sold for 312,750 EUR ($415,937, incl. premium).

Four twentieth century illustrated books, in astonishing bindings, out of a total of 190 lots, sold for over $100,000 each at Sotheby's - Paris in their Livres Illustrés de la Biblioitheque R. & B.L. sale, March 28, 2012.

A fine, first edition copy of Blaise Cendrars' collaboration with artist Sonia Delaunay, La Prose du Transsibérian et de la Petite Jehanne de France, in a chemise and box by Paul Bonet, brought the highest price.

It was estimated to sell for $53,173 - $79, 972 (40,000 - 60,000 EUR).

It fell under the hammer at $415,937 (312,750 EUR, incl. premium).

Cover.

 Called "one of the most beautiful  books ever created" when Yale University Press reissued it in 2008, and a milestone in the evolution of artists' books by Joanna Drucker in The Century of Artists' Books (p. 50), it is "a sad poem printed on sunlight," according to Cendrars, who published it under his New Man Editions imprint.  Comprised of four sheets glued together to form an accordion (fold-out) binding 199 centimeters tall when opened, only sixty copies out of a planned 150 were issued, and of those sixty only thirty are believed to have survived.

BONNARD, Pierre. VERLAINE, Paul. Parallélement.
Paris: Ambroise Vollard, 1900.

Binding by E.-A. Séguy.

EST. 30,000 - 40,000 EUR ($39,901 - $53,173).

Sold: 78,750 EUR (($104,673, incl. buyer's premium).

A copy of Paul Verlaine's Parallélement, illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, and in an stunning binding by E.-A. Séguy, was estimated at $39,875 - $53,173.

It fell under the hammer at $104,673 (incl. buyer's premium).

It was issued in an edition of 200 copies featuring 190 lithographs by Bonnard. Of the twelve copies, in original wrappers or rebound, that have come to auction since 2000, the highest hammer price was  $44,500 at Sotheby's June 11, 2002 for a copy bound by J. Anthoine Legrain. The scarce binding by the great Séguy accounts for the $60,000 difference.

Decorator and designer, Eugène-Alain Séguy (1890 - 1985), produced only a few bindings during his career. He is best known for his work in the graphic arts and textile design, including folios of Art Nouveau and Art Deco-inspired design models in lush pochoir that he published 1910 - 1930.

TEMPLE, Guillaume. ERNST, Max. Maximiliana.
ou L'Exercise Illégal de L'Astronomie.
Paris: Le Degré Quarante-et-un, 1964.

Binding by P.-L. Martin

Est. 50,000 - 70,000 EUR ($66,501 - $93,104).
Sold 84,750 EUR ($112,733).

One of seventy copies on Japon Ancien paper, each signed by the artist and editor, Maximiliana, Max Ernst's collaboration with Guillaume Temple, is graced with thirty-four watercolors by the Dada pioneer. This copy, in a binding by P.-L. Martin,  contained an extra, unpublished watercolor by Ernst. 

Estimated at $66,501 - $93,104  it fell under the hammer at $112,733 (incl. premium).

DALI, Salvadore. LAUTREAMONT, Comte de.
Les Chants de Maldoror.
Paris: Skira, 1934.

Binding by George Leroux (1993).

Est. 40,000 - 60,000 EUR ($53,173 - $79, 972).
Sold 78,750 EUR ($104,673, incl. buyer's premium).

Salvadore Dali's illustrations to Le Comte de Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror are considered to be his best book work. Issued in a total edition of 200 copies on vélin Arches, this copy, in a masterful, 1993 binding by Georges Leroux, is one of forty signed by Dali and containing an extra-suite of illustrations.

Estimated to sell for $53,173 - $79,972, it realized $104,673 (incl. premium).

BRAQUE, Georges. APOLLONAIRE, Guillaume.
Si Je Mourais La-Bas?
Paris: Louis Broder, 1962.

Binding by George Leroux after Braque.

Est. 40,000 - 60,000 EUR ($53,173 - $79, 972).

Sold 60,750 EUR ($80,812, incl. premium).

Many of the remaining lots realized five figure prices, not the least of which was a copy of the Georges Braque-illustrated edition of Apollonaire's Si Je Mourais La-Bas?, its eighteen colored woodcuts considered to be Braque's most important book illustrations. Issued in a total edition of 180 copies, the copy above, bound by Georges Leroux after Braque motifs, is one of forty with an extra suite of color woodcuts, each signed by Braque.

Estimated at $53,173 - $79,972, it sold for $80,812 (incl. premium).

[BRAQUE, Georges]. TUDAL, Antoine. Souspente.
Avec Une Lithographie en huit Couleurs de Georges Braque.
Paris: Robert Godet, 1945.

Binding by Thérèse Moncey.

Est. 2,500 - 3000 EUR ($3,325 - $3,990).
Sold 5,000 EUR ($6.650, incl. premium)

Even the stragglers - those modern illustrated books that sold below $10,000 - were impressive.

Braque's contribution to Antoine Tudal's Souspente is a lithograph in eight colors that is considered Braque's best such. This copy is one of an edition of 125.

Not much is known about the binder, Thérèse Moncey, beyond that she worked in Paris 1945-1965, and won a grand prize of French binding in 1950.

Estimated to sell for $3,325 - $3,990, it sold for $6.650 (incl. premium).
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Images courtesy of Sotheby's, with our thanks.
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Scarce Original E.H. Shepard "Winnie-the-Pooh" Drawing At Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

A scarce, original ink and watercolor drawing by Ernest H. Shepard of  Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet, the characters he brought to life in A.A. Milne's classic children's books, 1924-1928, has found its way to market. The drawing, signed and dated February 29, 1932, is a extraordinary example of Shepard illustrating Pooh characters outside the context of the Milne books.

It is being offered by Nate D. Sanders Auctions at their auction closing February 28, 2012.

The autograph letter is addressed to his agent, and reads:

"My dear Carter Brown

Many thanks for your letter. I think you have done splendidly. The view is shared by others (as you see) coloured.

Yours very sincerely

Ernest H. Shepard

Feb 29th/32"

As of this writing, the bid is $10,871. [Update: 2/27/2012, 5:08PM PST - bid is now at $23,000]. [Update: 2/28/2012, 8:33AM PST - the bid is now $27,830].

[UPDATE 2/29/2012: Final bid $40,954, incl. premium].

Ernest Howard Shepard (1879-1976) had been a successful illustrator since 1906 when he was introduced to Alan  A. Milne in 1923 by Punch staffer, E.V. Lucas; Shepard had  contributed to Punch during WWI and joined its staff in 1921.

Milne's initial reaction to Shepard's work was that it was not in a style he felt right to illustrate his work but nonetheless used him to illustrate his collection of poems, When We Were Very Young (1924). Pleased with Shepard's efforts, Milne insisted that Shepard illustrate Winnie-the-Pooh. Shepard based his conception of Pooh upon Growler, his son's stuffed bear.

Recognizing Shepard's enormous contribution to Winnie-the-Pooh's success, Milne assigned Shepard a percentage of his royalties. In what has become a legendary inscription, Milne wrote in Shepard's copy of Winnie-the-Pooh:

When I am gone,
Let Shepard decorate my tomb,
And put (if there is room)
Two pictures on the stone:
Piglet from page a hundred and eleven,
And Pooh and Piglet walking (157)…
And Peter, thinking that they are my own,
Will welcome me to Heaven.

The only known oil painting by Shepard of Pooh sold at auction for $285,000 in 2000.

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Images courtesy of Nate D. Sanders Auctions, with our thanks.

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Five and a Half Women in Search of a Good Time

by Stephen J. Gertz

Hand-colored heliogravure by Charles Hérouard aka Herric
From Le Libertinage du retroussé par G. Donville
Paris, Aux galants passe-temps [Jean Fort], 1937.
Not in Pia. Dutel not consulted.

Hand-colored heliogravure by Charles Hérouard aka Herric
From Le Libertinage du retroussé par G. Donville
Paris, Aux galants passe-temps [Jean Fort], 1937.

Hand-colored heliogravure by Charles Hérouard aka Herric
From Le Libertinage du retroussé par G. Donville
Paris, Aux galants passe-temps [Jean Fort], 1937.

"Little seems to be known about [the] publisher [of the above images] Jean Fort.  We do know that he was the nephew of Pierre Fort, a Paris bookseller and publisher who was active from c.1896 until c.1905 (it appears Louis Chaubard took over the shop in 1911). Following his Uncle's footsteps, Fort began his own publishing career in c.1901, from the Paris address of 73 Faubourg Poissonniere.

"Fort published under many different imprints; some openly published, some published clandestinely. From his Faubourg Poissonniere address in 1907 until c.1921 he primarily used the imprint 'Jean Fort' or 'J. Fort' but between 1910 - 1913 he also published a few books under the imprints, 'Bibliothèque des deux hémisphères' and 'Sweetgra's Quebec'. Betweem c.1921 and c.1925 Fort set up shop of 39 rue de Chabrol and then 12 rue de Chabrol, staying only a couple of years at each address during which he publishing a few books with the imprint 'Libraire du bon vieux temps'.

"In c.1925 Fort moved again, this time setting up shop at 79 rue de Vaugirard where he remained until c.1939. From Vaugirard he began publishing under the imprints of 'Au Cabinet du Livre' and the better known imprint of 'Collection des Orties Blanches', a series of flagellation novels. While it seems the majority of Fort's earlier publications were unillustrated these flagellation books often contained explicit engravings by some of the top erotica illustrators of the time: Jim Black [Luc Lafnet], Louis Malteste, Herric [Herouard], and Martin Van Maele" (Straight, Sheryl, Erotica Bibliophile).

Illustration by Jean-Gabriel Daragnès
From La Tentation de Saint Antoine by Gustave Flaubert.
Paris: J.-G. Daragnès, 1942.
Monod 4711. Carteret, IV, 161. Karaiskakis  343.

Jean-Gabriel Daragnès (1886-1950) was highly regarded both as a printmaker of wood engravings and etchings  and also as a master printer of other artists' work. Daragnès was born in Bordeaux; his father was a carpenter. From 1900-1905 Daragnès was apprenticed to a silversmith as an engraver. In 1907, having completed his military service, Jean-Gabriel Daragnès went to Paris, dreaming of a life as a Bohemian painter in Montmartre. In order to survive, he took on all kinds of work, and soon turned from landscape painting to printmaking and the art of the book. Daragnès was not mobilised for WWI as he suffered from tuberculosis. After the war he wanted to found his own press.

"By dint of selling everything he possessed, Daragnès raised enough money to build a house at 14, avenue Junot in Montmarte, to his own plans, with a printroom on the ground floor, a painting and printmaking studio on the first floor, and living quarters above. There Daragnés published some of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century, and also established a literary and artistic salon, whose members included Francis Carco, Pierre Mac Orlan, Colette, Léon-Paul Fargue, Noël Bureau, and Paul Valéry. It was Daragnès who taught Valéry the art of etching" (Neil Philip, Idbury Prints).

Illustration by Umberto Brunelleschi
from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.
Paris: Gilbert jeune, Librairie d'amateurs, 1953.
Monod 4682.

Italian artist Umberto Brunelleschi (1879 - 1949)  studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence and moved to Paris in 1900  where he soon established himself as a printer, book illustrator, set and costume designer.

He worked for Le Rire as a caricaturist and was a contributor to many of the deluxe French fashion publications including Journal des Dames et Des Modes, Gazette du Bon Ton and Les Feuillets d'Art. Brunelleschi was also the artistic director of the short lived but significant La Guirlande d'art et de la litterature 1919-1920.

In the 1920s he diversified into set and costume designs for the Folies Bergère, the Casino de Paris, the Théâtre du Châtelet and theaters in New York, Germany, and in his native country. He created costumes for Josephine Baker. 

His illustrated books include Voltaire (Candide, 1933), Charles Perrault (Contes du temps jadis,1912), Musset (La Nuit Vénitienne), Goethe, Diderot (Les Bijoux indiscrets, etc.), Les Masques et les personnages de la Comedie Italienne, 1914; Phili ou Par dela le Bien et le Mal," 1921; Le Radjah de Mazulipatam," 1925; Le Malheureux Petit Voyage, 1926; and Les Aventures de Roi Pausole, 1930.
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All images courtesy of Julien Mannoni Livres Anciens, with our thanks.

A tip o' the hat to our old friends Sheryl Straight and Neil Philip.
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