[Rarebooks] FS: A Miscellany

[John & Karen Howell]

Offered today: a miscellany of 8, mostly private press, items.
 
 
1 DICKINSON, Emily (1830-1886).  My Cricket.  A Poem by Emily Dickinson.  With an Engraved Frontispiece by David Lance Goines.  Claremont, CA: Oldtown Press, 1986.  8vo.  8 ½ x 6 inches.  [10] pp.  Frontispiece engraving, small vignette in green on the title page and colophon, text printed in green and black; text clean.  Marbled wrappers, printed paper top cover label, stitched, green laid paper endpapers; binding square and tight.  Library of Congress “Surplus” rubber stamp on front free end-paper, blind stamp on page 5/6.  SCARCE.  SIGNED by Susan M. Allen under the Printer’s Note.  Very Good.
$ 250
LIMITED EDITION of 150 numbered copies, this is number 69.  Designed, hand set, and printed by Susan M. Allen on a Vandercook proof press using Bembo type on Rives paper.  An etching press was used to print the frontispiece.  This is the first accurate printing of Emily Dickinson’s poem “My Cricket” which exists in a holographic copy in the Denison Library, Scripps College.  It was written in the 1860s and given to Gertrude Vanderbilt in the mid-1860s.  A beautiful copy of a beautiful production. 
 
2 HOFFMAN, Richard J. (1912-1989)]  DONNE, John (1572-1631).  All mankinde is of one Author….  [Los Angeles]: The Hoffmans, 1946.  Broadside.  15 ¼ x 11 inches.  Printed both sides with a stained-glass vignette, first line in red ink with a red fleuron (on the recto), and a colophon in black on the verso.  Un-marked, some shelf wear / creasing.  The 17th of Donne’s “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions” printed by Richard, Ruth, Judith, Susan, and Hilary Janet Hoffman for the Christmas season, 1946.  Very Good.  $ 50
 
Printer’s Presentation Copy
 
3 [ESTIENNES] Linotype & Machinery Ltd.  Henri and Robert Estienne and Their Successors [half-title].  A Distinguished Family of French Printers of the Sixteenth Century.  Henri & Robert Estienne.  London: Linotype & Machinery Ltd., 1929.  4to.  13 ½ x 8 ¾ inches.  [12] pp.  All printed within red rules, half-title, frontispiece portrait of Robert Estienne bears the mark of Henrik Hondius, Dutch engraver (b. 1573), Estienne’s printer’s device on the title page, the last page, headpiece, and 3 initials cut in wood from De Græce printed by Robert Estienne at Paris in 1548, the colophon on page 11 was reproduced and printed in the same position as the colophon of De Græce; text clean, unmarked.  Quarter vellum, marbled paper, gilt-ruled covers, spine titled in gilt, top edge gilt; binding square and tight, corners showing.  INCRIBED in the preliminaries by George W. Jones, Printer.  Very Good.
$ 150
LIMITED EDITION of 100 copies printed on Kelmscott paper.  This book was the first setting in 18 point Linotype Estienne Old Face type.  Printed in London by George W. Jones at “The Sign of the Dolphin” in Gough Square. 
 
PRESENTATION COPY: Inscribed and dated by George W. Jones to Harold A. Seeger “with affectionate regard and much esteem” June 1931.  Also included is a typed letter, signed, from George W. Jones, Printer, on his letterhead, to John Julius Johnck, Harold A. Seeger, Lawton R. Kennedy and Freda Kennedy dated June 5, 1931 in which Jones praises the work of the San Francisco printers. 
 
4 FOCILLON, Henri (1881-1943).  Henri Focillon’s Preface to Audin’s Le Livre Son Architecture son Technique Translated from the French by Edith Waldo Johnson.  Los Angeles: Arthur M. Ellis, 1932.  Pamphlet.  [iv], (8), [2] pp.  8 ¼ x 5 ¼ inches.  Title-page vignette of medieval scribe at work, headpiece, decorative initial; text clean, unmarked.  Brown wrappers titled in black on the front cover, stitched; binding square and tight.  Fine.
$ 65
No Limitation Stated.  Printed at the Ampersand Press by Arthur M. Ellis & Grant Dahlstrom.  This essay upon the work of those who design and produce books appeared as the introduction to a volume by Marius Audin published in Paris in 1924.  Privately printed for presentation to Roxburghe Club members.  Not in Olmsted and Magee, 40 Years. 
 
5 Grabhorn Press Proof Sheets.  11 sheets, some folios, others smaller.  Identified illustrators include Valenti Angelo and Donald McKay for works printed by the Grabhorns in the 1920s.  Loosely laid in a folder entitled “Women of California, looking for trouble,” printed on yellow paper, folded once, with 3 designs printed on the front cover.  Very Good set. 
$ 250
This group of 11 proof sheets are most likely all from the same source.  So far we have been able to identify 2 artists on 7 sheets.  Included is a Donald McKay illustration of a monk in the scriptorium yawning after a day’s work at the writing desk, the first appearance of which I know about was for the Grabhorn edition of Richard De Bury’s Philobiblon of 1925.  Six sheets have known Valenti Angelo illustrations, signed by the artist in the plates, including an illustration for Oscar Wilde’s Salome printed by the Grabhorns in 1927; 4 sheets with 6 illustrations for the Grabhorn’s Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile printed for Random House in 1928; and another unidentified Angelo illustration of a donkey, fox, and a man telling the donkey a secret.  One of the sheets is a miscellany of 30 cuts, 29 of which surround a larger floral design and contain various images including clocks, buildings, farm animals, a soldier and others. 
 
6 GUNN, Thom (1929-2004).  Unsought Intimacies: Poems of 1991.  Three Etchings, Theophilus Brown.  Berkeley: Peter Koch, 1993.  4to.  12 ¼ x 8 ¼ inches.  [32] pp.  The text is introduced with a printed paper label, 3 etching by Theophilus Brown printed by Brian Shure at Smalltree Press in San Francisco; text clean, unmarked.  Blue gray paper over flexible boards, printed paper label on front cover is pasted onto another brown paper label; binding square and tight.  Slip case.  SIGNED by Thom Gunn and Theophilus Brown on the colophon.  Fine.
$ 500
LIMITED EDITION of 130 numbered copies, this is number 91.  Designed and printed by Peter Rutledge Koch assisted by Inge Bruggerman, Richard Seibert and John von Zelowitz.  Printed in monotype Van Dijck roman and italic on paper made especially for this edition by Robert Serpa.  Bound in Timothy Barrett paper-case paper by Priscilla Spitler at BookLab Inc.  Of the ten poems in this book, “American Boy” appears here for the first time. 
 
Thom Gunn was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England and his later American poetry in which he displayed a looser, free-verse style.  After relocating from England to San Francisco, Gunn wrote about homosexual themes as well as drug use, sex, and topics related to his bohemian lifestyle.  He won numerous major literary awards. 
 
Inspired by Lewis Allen’s Printing with the Handpress
 
7 JOHNSON, Ruth and JOHNSON, Foster.  Bookman’s Holiday.  Drawings by Richard Brzozowski.  [Meriden CT]: Bayberry Hill Press, 1971  Folio.  15 ¼ x 10 ½ inches.  [vi], 22, [2] pp.  Half-title printed in red and black with a black fleuron, frontispiece drawing of the authors, title page printed in red, blue and black inks with a blue book vignette, initials in blue and red, two drawings in the text; text clean, unmarked.  Quarter red cloth, marbled boards, top cover label printed in red and black inks, red end-papers with outline map of the Johnson’s itinerary in England; binding square and tight, corners showing, shelf wear.  Very Good.
$ 350
LIMITED EDITION of “a few more than” 80 copies, this is number 58.  The Bayberry Hill Press was a small publishing company in Connecticut that produced a series of hand-crafted books between 1958 and 1979.  This book is the first attempt of the Bayberry Press to print on dampened hand-made paper using the method described by Lewis M. Allen in Printing With the Hand Press.  Printed on Tovil paper hand made by J. Barcham Green at Hayle Mill, Maidstone, Kent, England.  Handset in 18 point Centaur.  Printed on an ancient foot-powered Golding which for many years was owned and operated by Fred and Bertha Gody.  The goal of this work was to imitate the work of the Ashendene Press. 
 
8 KELLY, Brigit Pegeen (b. 1951).  Iskandariya.  Aquatints by Briony Morrow-Cribbs.  [Vancouver, BC]: Heavenly Monkey, 2007.  8vo.  8 ¾ x 5 inches.  [18] pp.  11 aquatints (including the frontispiece) by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, title page printed in black and brown, ; text clean, unmarked.  White wraps with stitched spine showing the gatherings, etched dust-jacket printed by the artist on sekishu paper, protective 4-sided sleeve with a Morrow-Cribbs design printed on one side, enclosed in a gray paper slip-case with printed paper spine label; binding square and tight.  SIGNED by author and artist on the colophon.  Fine.
$ 1,250
LIMITED EDITION of 50 numbered copies, this is number 23.  Text handset in 18-point Perpetua italic, printed on damp HM Text handmade paper tinted by Reg Lissell to match the kitakata paper on which the aquatints are printed.  Each spread of text pages is separated by a folded sheet of kitakata, with an aquatint facing each page of text.  The illustrations were pulled by the artist in her studio on Whidbey Island, Washington.  The book is sewn into a non-adhesive structure by Claudia Cohen.  The text is a prose poem which first appeared in the New York Times.  The subject matter and imagery of the poem is in complete harmony with the bestiary of anthropomorphically jumbled creates of Briony Morrow-Cribbs. 
 
Brigit Pegeen Kelly is an award-winning American poet.  She is professor of English and Rhetoric at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Her awards include the Academy of Arts and Letters Witter Bynner Poetry Prize (1999), the Lamont Poetry Prize for Song (1994) and the Discovery / The Nation Poetry Prize (1986), among other honors and distinctions. 
 
TERMS OF SALE: Subject to Prior Sale. 10 % trade discount offered. Postage and insurance to be billed at cost. Check or PayPal preferred; credit cards also accepted. Institutions, dealers known to us, and prior customers in good standing may request invoice; otherwise CWO. All items are guaranteed, returnable and fully refundable within 30 days of receipt, provided prior notice of return given. CA sales tax where applicable, unless valid resale certificate provided or on file. Call or e-mail to reserve.
 
 
John Howell

310 367-9720
Please visit my new web-site: www.johnhowellforbooks.com