Aubrey Beardsley's Reading Woman

by Stephen J. Gertz

AUBREY BEARDSLEY (1872-1898)
Chaix, Paris, 1897.
Cropped plate from Les Affiches Etrangères.
The original poster was published in 1894.

 

In 1894, Aubrey Beardsley created a poster to advertise T. Fisher Unwin's Children's Books.

"Printed in black and purple...in its most common form  it was used to advertise Topsys and Turvys by P.S. Newell, four works by Palmer Cox, the first 19 volumes in Unwin's Children's Library, The Land of Puck by Mary Mapes Dodge, and the magazine St. Nicholas. 

"According to Gallatin the poster was also produced in reduced size [as here, 1897].

"Copeland and Day also used Beardsley's drawing (printed in black and yellow) on a poster promoting The Yellow Book... They did so without Unwin's authorization, a step which led to an acrimonious correspondence between the two publishers and threats of legal action after the design was reproduced in an article about posters published in the March 1896 issue of The Overland Monthly, an American periodical" (Lasner).

Lasner 75. Gallitan 791.
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Image courtesy of Swann Galleries, with our thanks.

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William Blake Meets Batman

by Stephen J. Gertz

Garden of Love by Delphi Basilicato.

 In 2007, Letterpress II students at the Center for Book Arts in New York, under the direction of master printer Barbara Henry, produced Songs, a collaborative artist book in a portfolio of nine loose letterpress and hand-colored folded sheets that reimagined William Blake, excerpting twelve poems from his Songs of Innocence and Experience and illustrating them anew. The edition was limited to thirty-nine copies.

The poems included in this Songs for the modern age are: The Garden of Love; The Fly; A Dream; The Human Abstract; The Laughing Song; The Poison Tree; The Shepherd; The Tyger; The Blossom; The Sick Rose; Infant Joy;  Infant Sorrow. The compositor-printers were Delphi Basilicato, Amy Bronstein, Bonnie McLaughlin, Amber McMillan, Sarah Nicholls, Michelle Raccagni, Rosie Schaap, Louisa Swift, and Barbara Henry. Each sheet was signed by the individual printer.

Title-page.

William Blake's conceptual collection of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Experience, first appeared in 1794, a marriage of Songs of Innocence (1789), comprised of nineteen poems celebrating the human spirit when allowed to be free as in childhood, and Songs of Experience, twenty-six later poems in which he demonstrates what happens to the human spirit when the real world of adults intrudes and shackles us by rules and religious doctrines. He considered these to be the two states of the human soul. He illustrated the collection with his own engravings.

Blake's title page engraving sums it up: Adam & Eve in and out of the Garden of Eden. Blake was besotted by God and the Bible but not by the Church of Endland, nor any religion, for that matter. Influenced by the American and French revolutions, freedom of thought and imagination drove him; to him imagination was the body of God, the basis of human existence. It is unfettered creativity and imagination that bring us close to God, for that is what God is, the font of all creative endeavor. The mystic streaks through his work. He was the forefather of Romanticism.

Blake's original title-page engraving.

The conflict between spiritual freedom and imprisonment by religious dogma remains a constant. In Delphi Basilicato's contribution to Songs, a trio of superheroes, including The Dark Knight, confront a scolding priest with verses adapted from Blake's Garden of Love:

Priest: Thou Shalt Not!!! Thou Shalt Not!!! Thou Shalt Not!!!

Flash: Bloody fuckin' Christ...
           I went to the Garden of Love,
           And saw what I never had seen:
           A chapel was built in the midst
           Where I used to play on the green.

Green Lantern: And the gates of this chapel were shut,
                         And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
                          So I turn'd to the garden of love
                          That so many sweet flowers bore;

Batman: And I saw it was filled with graves,
               And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
               And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
               And binding with briars my joys and desires.

To Blake, it was the Church that corrupted the Garden, not Adam and Eve, and the Garden became a graveyard littered with broken spirits. To Dephi Basilicato, in Songs, superheroes - crusading, Christ-like angels, seraphim in capes and tights - are the only thing that stand between us and The Dark Church, saviors against those who would save our souls by crushing them.

In Basilicato's image artists are culture's superheroes, keeping repressive forces in check, the A-Team in battle against the bad guys, and Blake is Charlie, these angels' unseen, anti-Establishment chief, pointing the way toward enlightenment and resolution of the case.

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BLAKE, William. Songs. New York: Center For Book Arts, 2007. No. 12 of 39 copies. Nine folio sheets, each signed by the artist. Loose, as issued, in orange paper portfolio with white paper title label to spine.
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Internal images courtesy of The Kelmscott Bookshop, currently offering this item, with our thanks.

Image of binding courtesy of Center for Book Arts, with our appreciation.

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Satyr Reads Book To Wood Nymph While Trees Observe

By Stephen J. Gertz

Somebody's Book by Arthur Rackham.

Appearing on page 92 of The Windmill, an anthology of authors and illustrators published by William Heinemann Ltd., Somebody's Book by Arthur Rackham, makes its debut; it is found nowhere else.

The authors represented in The Windmill include John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, Siegfried Sassoon, John Masefield, Maurice Baring, Max Beerbohm, Algernon Swinburne, Lafcadio Hearn, Vita Sackville-West, Israel Zangwill, Stephen Crane, Arthur Symons, Christopher Morley, W. Somerset Maugham, Jack London and others.

Many of the pieces in the book appear here for the first time. Profits from its sale were donated to the Royal Literary Fund. Also present are facsimiles of manuscripts or letters by R. S. Stevenson, W. H. Page, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, A. C. Swinburne, Rutland Boughton and Laurence Sterne.

Booktryst readers are invited to imagine what book the satyr is reading to his darlin' dryad. You may leave your answers below in the Comments section. I don't think it's The Vicar of Wakefield.

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[RACKHAM, Arthur, Cecil Alden, Hugh Thompson, illustrators]. CALLENDER, L. (editor). The Windmill: Stories, Essays, Poems & Pictures by Authors and Artists whose Works are pubiished at the Sign of the Windmill. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1923. First edition, lim ited to 500 copies. Quarto. ix, [1], 224 pp. Four color plates with captioned tissue guards, four black and white plates (one double-page), seven facsimile reproductions. 

Publisher's original quarter black cloth over orange papered boards. Gilt lettered spine, publisher's windmill vignette in gilt to upper cover. Issued with printed dust jacket.

Latimore and Haskell, p. 57.

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Graphic Novels Go Platinum At The School Of Visual Arts

By Nancy Mattoon

Illustration From Gant Powell’s Graphic Novel,

Letters to Guilford Norton Thomas Whitleim:
A Collection of First-class Problems.
(Image Courtesy of School Of Visual Arts.)

When French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849, "Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose," he wasn't talking about graphic novels. That term, designating a book-length story for adults told in images with or without text, only came into popular use in 1978. But the roots of graphic story telling are ancient.

Illustration From: Poetry and Prose
By Maria Goldfarb.

Paleolithic cave paintings were meant to communicate a narrative, although modern readers can't be sure if the story is ceremonial, religious, or just another "fish story" about the big one that got away. Egyptian hieroglyphics were a combination of letters and pictographs, or characters that look like what they represent. And early Christian Church fathers used icons and illuminated manuscripts to help get their message across to would-be converts, most of whom were illiterate.

A Page From Miss Eggplant's American Boys,
By Jungyeon Roh.

Swiss artist Rodolphe Topffer (1799-1846) is considered to be the granddaddy of comic strip art and graphic novels. His comic tales of love and loss were told through sequential autography, a looser form of the lithograph. Toppfer encouraged artists to "invent some kind of play, where the parts are arranged by plan and form a satisfactory whole."

Philip Bowles' Illustration For
Reflections of Hilario: A Pictorial Essay.

The 21st century ancestors of Toffer are being celebrated in a new exhibit from Manhattan's School for Visual Arts (SVA). The Book Show, is an exhibition of 20 books created by students in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department, curated by Department Chair Marshall Arisman and faculty member Carl Nicholas Titolo. Arisman is proud of the impact of the art form on the publishing world, "If you walked into Barnes & Noble 20 years ago, there was not a graphic novel section. Now it's huge...It's not just 14-year-olds."

Image For Ryan Hartley's
Age Of Exploration.

The range of subject matter in the show, which runs through mid-October 2010 with highlights available online, is staggering. Phillip Bowles' Reflections of Hilario: A Pictorial Essay is based on the true story of Hilario Arguimbau, a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War who produced cartoons to record his experiences. Ryan Hartley's The Age of Exploration is a resource guide and journal for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth, which will be further shaped after the show by students in a Brooklyn after school program. And Jungyeon Roh's lyrical Miss Eggplant's American Boys is based on a 2008 hit single by singer Estelle. It tells the story of an Asian vegan on a quest to meet her ideal man in America.

Jonah By Ben Voldman.

Marshall Arisman notes that his highly selective 20-student MFA program used to produce primarily illustrators of magazines, newspapers, and children's books. These days he says more than 40 percent create graphic novels. SVA alumnus Dash Shaw, who began creating graphic novels as kid, explains, "It's really immediate, if you just have a pen and some paper you can make it. That's different from movies, which require a lot of money." The chair of the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department of SVA, Thomas Woodruff believes the school's students are part of a brave new world for graphic novels, "We’re in the midst of the new platinum age for sequential art."
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Thursday's Child Is A Vintage Damsel in Danger - Or Dangerous!

First paperback edition in Dutch of Christie's The Body in the Library.
Artist: Rein van Looji.

Dames. Good looks, legs that start at the floor and go all the way to heaven, and a soft spot for hard eggs gets 'em into trouble every time. Or, they'll sock you in the gut with love then karate chop you when they give you the air.

Some are too sensitive for this rotten world.

Villa Cascara by Mr. A. Roothaert. Ultrecht: Bruna, 1950. First edition
  Dust jacket by Rein va Looji.

Some are misunderstood.

Popular Library 302. 1949. The Old Battle Ax by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding.
Cover by Rudolph Belarski.

Some are haunted by the man that got away.

Avon 186. 1949. Night Cry by William Stuart. First edition in paperback.
Cover art by Ann Cantor.

Some get tongued-tied when the handyman stops by to lend a hand...

London: Reader's Library, n.d., c. late 1940s
A paperback original. Artist unknown.

...And others express fear when Mr. Fixit flexes his fingers.

Popular Lirary 215. 1949. The Silver Forest by Ben Ames Williams.
Cover by Rudoplf Belarski.

Others hang out with the wrong sort of men.

Franfurt: Ullstein, 1966. Cover artist unknown

Some take it and like it.

Archer Kaywin 3. 1951. Take It and Like It
by Spike Morelli with the the gloves off.
First U.S. edition of a U.K. paperback original.
Cover by Reginald Heade.

Others aren't so crazy about it.

White Circle 325. 1947. Strange Landing by Laurence Meynell.
Cover by "Bac"?

Some resort to chin tucks that go horribly awry.

Boardman TvB 105. 1952. London, U.K. The Screaming Mimi by Frederick Brown.
Cover by Denis McCloughlin.

Others fall prey to fiends who shoot 'em up first and ask questions later.

Giganten 20. Rotterdam: Kerco, 1964.
Dutch translation of Sax Rohmer's [Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward]
The Triumph of Fu Manchu. Artist unknown.

Some fall for smooth-talkin', green skinned Euro-Trash and live to regret it.

Avon 272. 1950. Europa by Robert Briffault.
Two states of the cover. A: Girl against map. B. Bondage.

And then there are the poison damsels who don't give a damn, who checked their morals at the door and left them there on the way out.

London: Pedigree Books (Edwin Self), 1959.
First Pedigree paperback edition. Artist unknown.

And there's the skirt who invites you to a party that's no party where she reveals herself as a twisted daughter of Satan!

London: Pedigree (Edwin Self), 1955. The Satanic Mass by H.T.F. Rhodes.
First Pedigree paperback edition. Artist unknown.

I'm Mike Hammer. I dated these broads. In high school. You don't want to know what happened in college. Hint: My gun is quick, you laughed, and now vengeance is mine. Kiss me, deadly, baby. I'm ready for you. Yeah, that's Viagra in my pocket and I'm just glad to see you.

Rotterdom: Combinatie, 1952. Renzez-vous met de dood (I, the Jury).
First edition in Dutch.Translated as Rendezvous With Death.
Dust jacket illustrator unknown.

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Images courtesy of the UK Vintage collection at Flickr, via a tip from Will Schofield's A Journey Round My Skull, courtesy of Tosh Berman, who has a great eye and visual sense, no doubt inherited from his father, Wallace Berman. Tosh publishes Tam Tam Books, a small press that spcializes in 20th century literature, and is devoted to reprinting lost masterpieces. He has a particular fondness for the works of Boris Vian.

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