20th Century Limited First Edition Volumes, William Blake's Illustrations to the Bible & Mona Wilson's the Life of William Blake - 2 Books

Description

Two books offered together; title (1*) and (2***), described below:

Title (1*): William Blake's Illustrations to the Bible. A Catalogue … more Two books offered together; title (1*) and (2***), described below:

Title (1*): William Blake's Illustrations to the Bible. A Catalogue compiled by Geoffrey Keynes.
Author: William Blake.
Publisher: The Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust.
Origin: Chateau de Boissia, Clairvaux, Jura, France.
Designer: Arnold Fawcus
Edition/limitation: First edition/copy no. 10 of 230** copies (**UK distribution) out of 506 copies total.
Printer: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd., London and Colchester.
Binder: Wigmore Bindery, and Mansell (Bookbinders) Ltd., London.
Publication date: 1957.

Description: i-xiii p., 53p. Oblong Fo. Some pages unnumbered; e.g. colour plates at rear. 1/4 black morocco elephant folio hardcover, gilt title on spine cover, marble boards, vellum board tips, tipped-in colour lithograph frontispiece, text set by hand in 18 point Centaur, pages printed in Paris on Arches pure rag paper, the great majority of tissue guarded pictures are shown as small reproductions in monochrome collotype (numbered 1-175) followed by (8) full-size colour reproduction plates of a small selection of pictures, a ninth serves as the frontispiece to the volume.

Measures: .5 W x 16.25 D x 22.25 H inches.
Approx. weight: 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

About the work: The series of nearly two hundred Bible illustrations in tempera, colour-printed drawing, and water-colour, which were produced during Blake's middle years has not until now been brought together as a whole, either in original or reproduction form. We owe the possibility of assembling the Bible pictures to two men, William Michael Rossetti, the poet's brother, who prepared the annotated list of Blake's paintings, drawings and engravings for Gilchrist's Life of Blake in 1863, and W. Graham Robertson, the Blake collector, who between 1885 and 1940 acquired no less than one-quarter of the pictures in the present series, including the remainder of those preserved after the death of Thomas Butts by his family. The dispersal of Graham Robert's Blake collection at Christie's Sale-room on the 22nd July 1949 was a historic occasion. No comparable Blake sale can possibly take place again. Of the 48 pictures in the series in Graham Robertson's possession, nineteen passed at the sale into the hands of public galleries in Great Britian and another 7, including 5 of the colour-printed drawings, had already been bequeathed to the Tate Gallery by the owner. Before the Graham Robertson sale took place, the William Blake Trust had photographs made of all the pictures in the collection, and these form the nucleus of the present volume. (Goyder)

About the author: A remarkable printmaker, painter, and poet, William Blake (1757–1827) developed a wildly unconventional world view, representing universal forces of creation and destruction — physical, psychological, historical — through his own cast of characters. By combining his poetry and images on the page through radical graphic techniques, Blake created some of the most striking and enduring imagery in British art. (Getty Museum)

About the compiler: Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982) was a surgeon, writer and art collector; prominent scholar and collector of the works of William Blake; founded the William Blake Trust. Lived in Brinkley, Suffolk. (British Museum)

About the publisher: Trianon Press was a Paris-based publisher of fine art books founded in 1947 by Arnold Fawcus, who directed its activities until his death in 1979, after which his wife and longtime colleague Julie Fawcus saw several projects through to completion and closed the Press in 1983. The first Trianon Press book, produced at the behest of the Louvre Museum, was Les Baigneuses (1947) on the work of Paul Cezanne, facsimiles for which were made by a unique combination of collotype and pochoir techniques developed by Daniel Jacomet, whose workshop would be responsible for producing much of the most admired work of the Press. Upon encountering Les Baigneuses while investigating adequate means of reproducing illuminations from William Blake's Jerusalem, Blake scholar Sir Geoffrey Keynes established the William Blake Trust, under the auspices of which the Trianon Press would produce facsimiles, via the Jacomet process, of 26 of Blake's illustrated works over a span of 30 years, from 1951 to 1982... (OAC)

Title (2***): The Life of William Blake.
Author: Mona Wilson.
Publisher: The Nonesuch Press.
Origin: 16 Great James Street, London.
Edition/limitation: First edition/copy no. 1244 out of 1480 copies.
Printer: Chiswick Press, Tooks Court, London.
Publication date: 1927.

Description: i-xv p., 397 p. (Appendices and Notes, 313-397 p.). 4to. 1/4 vellum hardcover, marble boards, illustrated text pages with 24 plates printed on Vidalon paper. Provenance: Chaucer Head Bookshop (Stamp adhered inside rear board).

Measures: 2 W x 7.75 D x 11 H inches.
Approx. weight: 3 pounds, 11 ounces.

About the work: The publication of Mr. Geoffrey Keyne's complete edition of The Writings of William Blake (Nonesuch Press, 1925) and the appearance of his Bibliography, printed by the Grolier Club of New York, have put at the disposal of a biographer material which was not available when Alexander Gilchrist wrote his Life of William Blake. The attempt has been made in this book to embody additional information and to examine by its light such of Gilchrist's statements as appear to be of doubtful accuracy. (Wilson)

Mona Wilson's LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE is considered one of the most valuable studies of Blake's life and work, particularly of Blake's symbolic books. This edition was edited by the Blake scholar Geoffrey Price and includes his Preface, as well as Prefaces by Mona Wilson. (goodreads)

About the author: Mona Wilson (1872 – 1954) was a British public servant and author. After voluntary social work, seeking to improve the conditions of working women in deprived industrial areas, she joined the civil service in 1911, and became one of the first women in Britain to earn equal pay with her male colleagues. She left the civil service in 1919 and pursued a literary career.

Wilson's literary career had begun before she became a civil servant. In 1909 under the pen name Monica Moore, she wrote a short story, "The Ordeal", printed in The Nation; it featured the miseries of mill workers.

Wilson's first full-length biography, The Life of William Blake, was published in 1927, the centenary of the subject's death. Wilson concentrated on Blake's life-story and his writings, although she did not neglect his paintings. The New York Times thought her prose "rather uninspired", but found the book "careful and impartial … certainly the best and most authoritative life of Blake yet written". When a revised edition was published in 1949, The Manchester Guardian commented, "Miss Wilson may have assumed rather too easily the unity of mystic, poet, and artist in Blake, but she has told his story more fully and sensibly than anyone else." (Wiki)

About the publisher and provenance: Nonesuch Press was born in the creative undercurrents of early 20th-century London, within the basement of Birrell & Garnett’s bookshop. Its inception was marked by the release of John Donne’s Love Poems in May 1923, setting the stage for a legacy of over 140 publications. The press thrived during the 1920s and 1930s, a period characterized by a fervent exploration of aesthetic and literary excellence.

Unlike traditional private presses of its time, Nonesuch Press embraced a novel approach by designing books with a small hand press and outsourcing the printing to commercial printers. This method, pioneered by Meynell, aimed to marry the quality of fine-press publications with the affordability and accessibility of commercial books. Meynell’s ambition was to prove that “mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends,” challenging the notion that exquisite book design was exclusive to the hand-pressed domain. (encyclopedia design)

This book was acquired by a previous owner at the Chaucer Head Bookshop, a general and second hand bookseller in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. It was founded in 1830 in Birmingham before moving to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1960.

The shop was founded by John Cadby in 1830, and was then succeeded in March 1870 by a William Downing.

The shop is now located in a Grade II listed building at 21, Chapel Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, moving here in 1960. It was home to Julius Shaw, a friend of William Shakespeare best known for being a witness to the poet and dramatist's will. Over the centuries it has also housed the first infirmary in Stratford and at least two banks (visitors can see the extraordinarily thick door which presumably made up the first line of bank security).

In 1905 it became home to The Shakespeare Head Press, founded by Arthur Henry Bullen after he had a dream in which he was presented with a copy of the works of Shakespeare "printed in the poet's home town".

Because of the Shakespeare connection a wealth of documentary evidence survives - for example the names and occupations of each tenant for the last 400 years can be traced. (Wiki) less