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Shirley Jones. Scop Hwilum Sang (Sometimes A Poet Sang).
Llanhamlach, Wales: Red Hen Press, 1983.
Folio, terracotta morocco over black pictorial linen boards. Six color etchings.
Typewritten statement by Jones, describing the making of the book, laid in.
Original box. $2500.
First edition of the first production of the celebrated Red Hen Press, an illustrated
collection of Old English poetry, one of twenty-five copies signed byWelsh artist,
poet and translator Shirley Jones. Anglo-Saxon passages from
TheWanderer
,
The
Seafarer
,
The Battle of Maldon
,
The Dream of the Rood
,
Judith
, and
Beowulf
, printed in
red, face Jones’s modern translations in black: “my mind is with the sea-flood, /
over the whale’s territory; / it roams far and wide over the face of the earth, / comes
to me again, eager and unsatisfied; / the lone-flier screams, irresistably urges the
mind / to the whale-way over the ocean tracts.” Jones’s illustrations were inspired
by the bleak, spare Kentish coastline: “Etching is a rich medium and every
variation from almost black to pale green appears along with dark red to pale pink,
but the colours are basically just the two -- blue/green and the classic red of the
type facing it. I have never done anything so disciplined before and never been so
satisfied with the result.” She named her new press “after the Little Red Hen, who
did it all herself.” A fine copy of a high spot of modern book arts.
Daniel Defoe; [Madame de Pompadour].
Mémoires et Avantures de Madlle. Moll Flanders, Ecrits par Elle-Meme.
London: Chez Nourse, Librairie dans le Strand, 1761.
WITH
: Catalogue des Livres de la Bibliothéque de feue Madame
la Marquise de Pompadour, Dame du Palais de la Reine.
Paris: Jean-Thomas Herissant et fils, 1765.
Two octavo volumes, full contemporary mottled calf gilt, arms of
Madame de Pompadour to the boards of Moll Flanders. $28,000.
First edition in French of
Moll Flanders
, Defoe’s great novel of striving and
seduction, the copy of King Louis XV’s powerful mistress Madame de Pompadour.
At Versailles, the sparkling
bourgeoise
Pompadour displayed a mastery of arts and
letters matched by few royals: Voltaire called her the best-read woman of her
generation, and she was often painted with book or pen in hand.
Moll Flanders
,
however, represents the private side of a public reader: Moll’s parallels to
Pompadour were too striking for the book to work as a symbol of her high-
minded engagement with the arts. Accompanied by the original auction catalog
of Pompadour’s vast library: “a very revealing document, and one to drive a
bibliophile mad with desire.” The catalog is annotated in a contemporary hand,
noting prices realized on most of the books, including
Moll Flanders
. A cheerfully
amoral classic, from the library of a legendary courtesan and collector, and a true
piece of Versailles.
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