No Dress Rehearsal, Baby
New York: Ink, Inc., no date. Five loose broadside sheets, measuring 18 x 13 inches, wrapped in original glassine and mylar wrapper blindstamped “Ink, Inc. / New York.” Woolf, Chandler, and Nabokov broadsides printed in two colors. Glassine split at fold and chipped at edges, broadsides fine.
An uncommon and compelling collection of fine press literary broadsides by Ink, Inc., a graphic design, printing, and print-brokerage house established in 1978 by Thomas Whitridge. The title sheet includes the first eight lines of Wallace Stevens’s 1947 poem “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” printed at upper left. The Virginia Woolf broadside includes a paragraph from her 1928 essay, “The Sun and the Fish,” accompanied by a portrait of an exemplary fish: “In their shape is their reason.” The Raymond Chandler broadside reprints a famous incident in his 1939 detective novel The Big Sleep, when Philip Marlowe discovers a Sternwood sister in his bed. The Vladimir Nabokov broadside features a passage from his 1972 short novel Transparent Things, while the Jean Anouilh broadside includes an exchange between the lovers at the center of his 1945 play, Romeo et Jeannette. A fine complete set, unrecorded institutionally and in commerce.
Price: $450.00