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George Macy Imagery Thread 2Join LibraryThing to post.
In case you didn't know, I started up a blog documenting the fine books of the LEC and the Heritage Press: http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.comIt's fairly meaty, and I post updates here as I make them. Here's a repost of my last update so it doesn't get lost: It's a little later than I anticipated, but I've gotten my LEC Shaving of Shagpat up for you to view. http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/limited-editions-club-the-shav.... Pretty, pretty book. :) In further announcements, I have checked out all of these Heritage books that are now waiting for me to take pictures and post: The Sailor's Reader, edited by George Macy Volume V and VI of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, translated by Richard Burton and decorated by Valenti Angelo The Sonnets of Shakespeare with decorations by Valenti Angelo The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser with decorations by John Austen and woodcuts by Agnes Miller Parker The Book of Ruth with art by Arthur Szyk A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain with illustrations by Honore Guilbeau Tales of the Gold Rush by Bret Harte with art by Fletcher Martin Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin with art by Fritz Eichenburg And this is just the beginning. XD 3olepuppyMay 22, 2011, 7:27pm 
>2 Thanks so much for posting the images/words from A Sailor's Reader. As usual I love reading GM's enthusiastic remarks describing the thought behind the production. In particular I too have learned thru rereading that some stories will continue to be read over the years while others will not. And wouldn't it be great to jump on a train for a cross-country circuit with a big bag of books - and a bit of vino?
>4 Totally in agreement! One thing I hate about plane travel is that there is no time to read. When my late wife and I took our last train trip from Kansas City to Los Angeles, I was able to read all of Graham Greene's Stamboul Train on the trip--and still had time to look at the scenery. Even on the longest plane trip I've had lately, Los Angeles to Cairo, I couldn't get through a book as short as A Confederacy of Dunces. It's not just the shortness of the trip. The noise, discomfort and distractions of flying on commercial airliners just about makes concentration impossible. 5ironjawEdited: May 23, 2011, 3:26am
>4 I completely agree with you Robert. The seating arrangements provide much discomfort. I was just wondering if any good gentleman could elaborate on what GM was suggesting in the last sentence in italic under Tortue by T.E. Lawrence, forgive me I am an non-native English speaker: "You will find it very interesting indeed, I think, if you read it at the right time" http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/heritage-press-the-sailors-rea...
>5 Throughout The Soldier's Reader and The Sailor's Reader, Macy will comment before a selection that this particular piece is either to be read, or skipped over, depending on the serviceman's mood. He was sensitive to the time constraints under which the serviceman would be reading, and to the way in which the reader's mood would affect his reaction to each of the selections. Thus, in his preface to Cheever's "Sgt. Limeburner," a story about a "nasty, bullying" drill sergeant, the very first selection, he begins with "Before you read this story, please stop to consider your mood at this moment!" He advises that if the reader has had to deal with one of these recently, "please don't read this story now" but skip to a more provocative one, "Madame Tellier's Establishment" which in fact is not the next selection, but is 271 pages into the book! It is, of course, de Maupassant's story about a brothel, and Macy's preface to it begins, "Before you read this story, it seems proper for me to tell you that it will seem to you an improper story. Obviously you will now be anxious to begin to read it, and any further words I may print here will only be holding you back." Therefore, I think his preface to "Torture" was intended to suggest that it probably was not a story to be read before one parachutes behind enemy lines or engages in an action that might result in capture and possibly torture.
I apologize for my long absence from blogging - a vacation and a doldrums following said vacation has left the blog quite vacant as of late, but I've gotten some new photos taken of the current stack of library books I checked out plus my LEC Wanderer and my bizarre Huck Finn-bound Tom Sawyer, so expect some updates in the very near future.
Tomorrow didn't happen, did it? Sorry.
I've got more posts on tap for Thursday, just to let you know. I'll be covering Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the Sonnets of Shakespeare (with Angelo's decorations), Tales from the Gold Rush by Bret Harte, and the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
>10 Jerry, I sent you a scan of the Sandglass for the Shakespeare (an absolutely beautiful book in my opinion--and as nicely produced as anything the FS LEs have published of similar scope, such as their Rubaiyat). I also sent a scan of my copy of Harte's Tales of the Gold Rush. Mine is one of the limited number of copies the Heritage Press made for the Illinois Gear Company to use for presentation volumes, and bears a strong resemblance to Easton Press books with the leather binding and silk moiré endpapers. Unfortunately, I don't have a Sandglass for it. Shockingly, I don't seem to have the Twain Volume, either--though I thought I did. I must correct that oversight!
11) I did get that e-mail, and will get that up later today. Thanks!
I'll try to get some new posts up today, too.
>13, thanks for posting these! Horrible story on the water, sorry to hear that.
Oh no! How badly is the LEC damaged? 16WildcatJFEdited: Aug 12, 2011, 12:24am
15) Luckily, Crime & Punishment magically did NOT get wet. I'm not quite sure how that happened as it's the one that hit and knocked the vase over...I'm quite thankful, as it's the most expensive LEC I currently have. *whew* Thanks for the concern, but I was truly lucky. 14) You're welcome! As for the spill, it could have been much worse. I've been wanting to get better copies of most of the books that got a tad wrecked, so in a weird way it works out. Edit - A late-night surge powers a final pre-vacation post, this time on the LEC Vanity Fair! http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/limited-editions-club-vanity-f...See you when I get back! 17busywineAug 12, 2011, 12:45am
>16, beautiful pictures, the book looks great. I like the illustrations. Would like to get this LEC someday!
>16 Jerry, I'm sadly behind in scanning Monthly Letters, as a combination of circumstances--work out of state, a death in the family, and building a treehouse--has made it hard to find the time, and I owe both you and busywine a lot of scans. I promise to catch up next week and will send you a scan of the Vanity Fair Monthly Letter to post on your page.
18) No rush. I'll get the page set up once I get them from you, so don't fret about it too much. ^_^
Nice! I really like the line drawings by Karlis also, I had not seen them before. I am a fan of Blake, thanks for posting those pictures, I have not seen that edition either.
>20, 21 Strangely, the Plato is a volume I never acquired, but must remedy that! I have a paperback copy of these three dialogues in the Jowett translation from college so perhaps that's why I never bought this when it first came out. Incidentally, before I ever read the "Symposium" I was familiar with it through Leonard Bernstein's wonderful Serenade for Violin inspired by the dialogue. I think I first heard a bit of it on a Young People's Concert, then listened to the entire work many times at the KC Public Library. It's a work that doesn't get played much these days, but if you like Plato's mini-drama, I think you would probably enjoy Bernstein's "Symposium" as well. Jerry, The Pilgrim's Progress is a tough work to get into, but after the first third becomes strangely compelling, and its prose style was for a century or so afterwards the most influential English work after the Elizabethan masterpieces. It was also the inspiration for two first-rate 20th century musical works: Ralph Vaughan Williams' opera and the Landaas brothers' rock opera. 24kdweberSep 2, 2011, 2:51pm
>23 The LEC Crime and Punishment was designed by George Macy himself. Printed by E. L. Hildreth and Company; set in linotype Original Old Style, Worthy special paper; bound by Russell-Rutter Company. 25ironjawSep 2, 2011, 5:42pm
Sometimes I wish I was in the US, it is so easy to acquire LEC books at outrageously low prices
>25
Faisel, I have to say that the ridiculous custom fees you are charged make it seem that it would be cheaper to fly to the US, buy the books here, and take them back in your suitcase! (Although I guess the Customs officials would still be wondering what is in that 20 kg suitcase you are bringing back.)
24) Much thanks, I'll get that post updated this weekend. 28ironjawSep 3, 2011, 6:59am
Hahaha. Yeah your right Robert I cannot understand that they charge so much for books. Denmark is a very expensive place in terms of everything. I dont know anyone who voluntarily moved here and stayed for more than two years except for me :)
>30
Great page for a great book, Jerry. My scanner is broken so I will take some hi-rez pictures of my Monthly Letter and get them to you.
> 25; 26
Travel by ship from the US. I have done this and bought a LOT of books. Basically you can take as much as will fit in your cabin, it can be tricky moving from hotel to dockside though - if customs single you out, well you have a 'reasonable' allowance. At $10 to $46 per package it soon works out...
I've got another post for you today - a comparison of the Connecticut and Heritage Illustrated Bookshelf printing of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/heritage-press-the-adventures-...This is loaded with info on Twain's early LEC printing history and some stuff on the Junior Heritage Club, although I could use a whole lot of aid for it. There may be more later on, but I need a break from the computer. XD 34kdweberSep 11, 2011, 4:29pm
>30 Thanks for the post on Zadig, wonderful as usual. The recent activity on this board influenced me to pick up a copy. It's a nice book but I was surprised by the thickness of the pages (unusually thick and stiff paper). 35kdweberSep 11, 2011, 4:54pm
>33 I've uploaded a pdf of the Sanglass (Number III:34R) from the 1936 New York printing of the HP Tom Sawyer to IronJaw's Dropbox repository.
Ah, thanks, kdweber. :) I'll add that in later on.
Two things: I'm making a Heritage Press exclusive page, which will detail out HP books the LEC did not touch. Here's a taste: While the Limited Editions Club have been fully cataloged by Bill Majure at his store site, it's been difficult to get a comprehensive listing of every Heritage Press title. Michael Buccasso has made an admirable attempt with his books, but it's clear that the sheer quantity of Heritage titles is overwhelming. However, a couple Librarything members knocked their heads together to try to compile all of the exclusive Heritage Press books that do not have a LEC original or reprint, and the list is surprisingly large (and I'm sure we're missing a few). I've taken those initial postings done by Django2694, astropi and myself in this particular thread and expanded upon them as best I could to order to help aid collectors build their LEC collections. Links will be provided to my posts on the book if possible. THE FIRST SIX: Released in November and December of 1935, these six were special in that LEC members had first crack at exclusive artist-signed copies that were a little more upscale than the standard HP run. 1500 of these signed editions were produced. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens/John Austen Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare/Sylvain Sauvage The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne/W.A. Dwiggins The Song of Songs of Solomon/Valenti Angelo Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost/Pierre Brissaud A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman/Edward A. Wilson Signed Editions Beyond the first six, the Heritage Press would do a few other signed copies of their books. Here's what I know of: Book of Edward A. Wilson: A Survey of His Work 1916-1948 - 1948, currently unknown quantity produced Ink & Blood by Arthur Szyk - 1946, 1000 copies made. Both of the above are special collections of art from these prolific contributors to the George Macy Company, and are among the harder books to track down. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman/Rockwell Kent - 1000 leather-bound editions with Kent's signature were made on top of the standard edition. As of now, that's what I know in terms of George Macy Company-produced signed Heritage Press titles. The Great Masters Series (my distinction) This series is a set of four biographical novels about four legends of art - Leonardo di Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Francisco Goya. These are reprints of works by contemporary (at the time) authors like Irving Stone and Hendrik Van Loon, and feature over a hundred pieces of art from the artist in question. They are likely the nicest copies of these you will find. I have organized them in publication order. Lust for Life by Irving Stone/Vincent van Gogh (1936) The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci by Dmitri Merejcovski/Leonardo Da Vinci (1937) R.v.R. the Life of Rembrandt by Hendrik Willem Van Loon/Rembrandt van Rijn (1938) This is the Hour: A Novel About Goya by Lion Feuchtwanger/Francisco Goya (1956) Exclusive Heritage Editions that Compete with LEC Volumes Oftentimes the Heritage Press or the Limited Editions Club would print books before one another, and the opposite press would then create their own unique version of the work. This is quite common and can make for an interesting comparison to see which one prefers. This is a fairly complicated grouping, so bear with me as I update, expand and remove books as I become more knowledgeable. Salome by Oscar Wilde/Valenti Angelo (1945 - the original printing is hand illuminated by Angelo himself and is very pretty!) - The LEC is a 2-volume set: one is the original French version of the play, with illustrations by Andre Derain done on black paper, which is fairly original. The second volume features Lord Alfred Douglas' English translations and Aubrey Beardsley's distinctive drawings. A rather large taste, but a taste nonetheless. Secondly, I'm updating my old posts - here's the links to the updates: http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/ye-olde-posts-with-new-content...http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/updating-ye-olde-posts-with-so...Any comments would be appreciated. :)
Wildcat, looks great and a good idea. Anyone have more info on the Ink & Blood by Arthur Szyk? Sounds very interesting. 39busywineSep 12, 2011, 11:40pm
>37, just saw a copy of Ink & Blood by Arthur Szyk - 1946 today, complete coincidence....Book Gallery on Phoenix. Took a quick glance, wow his work is great!
>39
Yes, this is a book I've lusted after for many years, but it has been out of my price range (at least for one in Fine or better condition) as long as I've known about it. I have never actually seen a copy in person, and I wonder if the color reproduction is good. Some photographs I've seen online have been a mixed bag--some good, some rather washed-out.
>40, i will try to get a picture or two of it in the next couple weeks, will let you know. The color reproduction looked excellent. I would call their edition very good, not fine. The inside was perfect, the cover/binding has a bit of wear, but still pretty darn good. 42kdweberSep 13, 2011, 9:46pm
A nice copy of Ink & Blood is still high on my wish list; though, I've never actually seen a copy either. 45kdweberSep 18, 2011, 2:33pm
>44 I didn't know that the regular edition of HP's Leaves of Grass was printed so much later than the initial signed limited edition printed for HP by the Lakeside Press in 1936. I had always assumed that they were printed around the same time.
45) Well, that's what seems to be the case with Django's, since it's his Sandglass I was working off of. Sadly, I didn't get one with my book, and mine has no print date, so my copy is a bit of a mystery.
>45 I expect, as mentioned in Jerry's blog, that Macy and Kent weren't on the best of terms. In his pre-LEC/Heritage Press days, Macy had partnered in a small publishing company that produced newer writings, often of a mildly erotic nature, but also mysteries, adventures such as the inimitable Cursed Be the Treasure, and books about the early movie stars such as Valentino and Fairbanks. One of the mildly erotic works was American Esoterica, a collection of short works which had probably been written for periodical publication but rejected because of concerns over charges of pruriency. This book was illustrated by Kent. Kent did Leaves of Grass for the Heritage press in the mid 30s and Erewhon for the LEC in 1934, then nothing after that. Was it his involvement with the Stalinist Soviet Union and Communism that caused the riff? Macy definitely was a patriot, but one should keep in mind that the LEC subscribers were, on the whole, much more conservative than Macy himself, and may have voiced a dislike of having their books illustrated by Kent. Macy frequently complimented Kent's work in the Monthly Letters--his work on Moby Dick and especially on Candide--so Macy didn't let his political views color his critical appreciation. Or was it just that Kent was probably the highest paid commercial artist in America, and may have been outside Macy's budget?
47 - Thanks for the additional insights on Kent and Macy, Django. I'll amend the post to add those in. :) 49zorraSep 18, 2011, 9:40pm
Very interesting. My childhood copies of Huck and Tom with the Rockwell paintings have The Heritage Reprints, New York on the title page. The (nicer) ones I just inherited say New York-The Heritage Press. 1936 for Tom, 1940 for Huck. The clarity and color of the paintings is sharper in the better editions, not surprisingly. My husband says I should now get rid of my old copies, but I just can't--they've been my friends for a very long time. :) 50sakayumeSep 18, 2011, 10:59pm
#44: I love seeing updates to your blog, even if they always end up adding to my wish list! :P I'd given my preference to the Sauvage illustrated version of Cyrano de Bergerac (without having seen the later Brissaud version), but I really like the look of the Brissaud illustrations and the typesetting of the text. I'll now have to own two Cyrano de Bergeracs... if I can find them.
BTW, got pictures of Ink and Blood, will post by this weekend. What a nice volume.
Jerry, you should be in jail for getting these for the prices you quote--you stole them! The Manon is just exquisite--I suspect that it was printed by the London printers most frequently used by Nonesuch--who had no facilities for printing other than proofs--namely, the Fanfare Press. The Tarkington is also wonderful. Although the story is very entertaining, and has been made into movies at least twice (once with Valentino!), the first Tarkington I ever read was Penrod--pretty much the Tom Sawyer of the wary 20th century--and my favorite of his works is still The Magnificent Ambersons. Orson Welles' great movie has somewhat overshadowed the novel itself, which won the Pulitzer Prize, but it's a great book. Tarkington's other Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Alice Adams, was completely overshadowed by the Katharine Hepburn movie from 1935. 56WildcatJFEdited: Sep 25, 2011, 12:26am
55) Heh, I do seem to get lucky at times. The Manon Lescaut was indeed a steal and a half. Anyway, I put up what little I could on George Macy's The Reader's Club, an interesting venture that was very short-lived, it would seem. http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/of-interest-the-readers-club/As I mention in the thread about The Reader's Club, I'm starved for info here, so anything you may know would be great.
56
As I just posted on a different thread, I only know what I just read on your blog. I'd love to be able to research this more in Macy's collected papers. I can surmise the venture was unfortunate in timing, and that WW II was primarily responsible for its failure--that and the fact that it was competing for the same readership as the well-established BOMC.
Finally got Ink and Blood up at Books and Vines! 63Django6924Edited: Oct 18, 2011, 9:14am
>61 Great job, Jerry! I need to double-check a few things, but one thing to change: Sterne's A Sentimental Journey was done first by the LEC, in a splendid edition designed and printed by Eric Gill with original etchings by Gill's son-in-law, Denis Tegetmeier. The book is signed by both. It's a lovely book, but Heritage's wartime issue with Sauvage's illustrations is very special too, and those who have a somewhat snobbish attitude to the Heritage Press should compare these too approaches. I wouldn't say either is better--both are indispensable if, like me, you are a fan of this wonderful story (I actually own 4 fine press editions of Sterne's masterpiece). PS: Did you forget the wartime anthologies: The Soldier's Reader and The Sailor's Reader?
62) Ah, I forgot about your pics, busywine. I can do that. ;) And I'll remove The Praise of Folly if they're the same - I didn't get a chance to screen every entry.
63) I'll bump Sentimental Journey up into the LEC/HP competing topic - another I forgot to check. And OF COURSE I need to include the Readers! XD I'll get these fixed up soon. Thanks to you both!
>64 The LEC In Praise of Folly is different: the illustrations by Lynd Ward are quite amazing, filled with imagery of modern war, which was ongoing when he did them for this edition. I like Masereel's for the Heritage edition, too. I'm curious as to why Ward's weren't used in the Heritage version, though I suspect it was that Macy was looking for a less contemporary take on man's folly.
Okay, all those corrections have been made. Thanks! Let me know if there's any others I forgot!
WildcatJF, Early on in your project, you mentioned the thought of getting permission from Easton and the LEC. For all practical purposes, the LEC died with the death of Mr. Shiff. His widow, Jean Shiff, is attempting to keep it going, but it is a difficult task to produce the super-fined books of recent years.
70) Actually, one of our members here had an interview with Mrs. Shiff and the club is pretty much done for. She has intentions on setting up a website for the Shiff era, but has no plans to continue publishing. It's sad news, that it is.
Thanks for the notice, though.
I've got a couple of posts lined up for today, but before that, I'm going to do a "viewer request" for the month of February. What books would you like to see me discuss? The four that get the most votes (or, if they are all different, the first four that were brought up) will be what I will document. I will be doing the Heritage Odyssey and the one book of the Essays of Montague I have today, with The Education of Henry Adams slated for the 21st and The Life of Benvenuto Cellini for the 28th, plus I will likely document whatever LEC treasure(s) I acquire this next weekend as soon as I can. All of the choices are Heritage Press titles from my collection, which I'll list below.
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine/Lynd Ward
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson/Lynd Ward
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo/Lynd Ward (2 volumes)
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe/Rene Clarke
Droll Stories by Honore de Balzac/Boris Artzybasheff
The Divine Comedy by Dante/William Blake
Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard by Thomas Gray/Agnes Miller Parker
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy/Agnes Miller Parker
The Coverly Letters/Gordon Ross
Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson/Miguel Covarubias
Walden by Henry David Thoreau/Thomas W. Nason
Memoirs of Saint-Simon/Pierre Brissaud
The Birds and The Frogs by Aristophanes/Marian Perry (Birds) and John Austen (Frogs)
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne/Valenti Angelo
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe/William Sharp
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau/William Sharp
The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Fritz Eichenberg
Resurrection by by Leo Tolstoy/Fritz Eichenberg
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle/various illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele, Sidney Paget and others
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio/Fritz Kredel
The Singular Adventures of Baron Munchausen/Fritz Kredel
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm/George Him
The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo/Tranquillo Marangoni
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper/Edward A. Wilson
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad/Lima de Freitas
Waverly by Walter Scott/Robert Ball
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder/Jean Charlot
The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper/Henry C. Pitz
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith/T.M. Cleland
Billy Budd and Benito Cereno by Herman Melville/Robert Shore
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus and Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley/John Farleigh
A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe/Domenico Gnoli
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens/Rene ben Sussan
The Chronicle of the Cid, translated by Robert Southey/Rene ben Sussan
The Tales of E.T.A. Hoffman/Hugo Steiner-Prag
The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe/Hugo Steiner-Prag
Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain/John Groth (Conn.)
Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm/Lucille Corcos (2 volumes)
The Ambassadors by Henry James/Leslie Saalburg
The Virginian by Owen Wister/William Moyers
The Jumping Frog and Other Stories by Mark Twain/Joseph Low (Conn.)
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius/Hans Alexander Mueller
Penguin Island by Anatole France/Malcolm Cameron
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen/Per Krohg
The Life of Samuel Johnson/no illust. (Volume II only)
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust/Bernard Lamotte
The Gallic Wars by Julius Casear/Bruno Bramanti
The Vicar of Wakefield by John Galsworthy/John Austen (Illustrated Bookshelf)
American Indian Legends, edited by Allan A. Macfarlan/Everett Gee Jackson
So, please shout out what you'd like me to cover by the 28th of this month, and I'll announce what books will be covered for February on the following day. :) Thanks! 73kdweberJan 16, 2012, 2:42pm
Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard by Thomas Gray/Agnes Miller Parker
A second vote for Gray's Elegy.
Thanks Wildcat. Ok, I'll add:
Green Mansions
The Poems of EA Poe
Peer Gynt
77kdweberJan 16, 2012, 4:30pm
Okay, here's my updated list:
Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard
The Vicar of Wakefield
Penguin Island
Peer Gynt 78TexacoJan 16, 2012, 5:23pm
75: I love Montaigne and these Heritage volumes were my introduction to his work.
I acquired my set from a friend whose aunt passed leaving a huge library of LEC and HP volumes.
Some she sold on ebay but I was given first choice as my friend said my love of books reminded her of her aunt who also loved books.
Such will no doubt be the fate of my books and this is as it should be and makes me very satisfied.
I cherish these volumes and would be curious to know how they compare to the LEC version.
Thank you for posting WildcatJF.
78- I'm glad to hear such a wonderful story! I will get the LEC editions documented in the next couple of weeks, I'm sure, since school starts for me Wednesday. I just have to get my library account straightened out. I will update here once I get them ready to go. Thanks!
76/77- Two for Elegy and two for Peer Gynt so far! All are good choices, though!
I love voting!
1) Coverley Letters
2) Prometheus Bound
3) Decameron
4) Vicar of Wakefield
And since I live in Chicago, and we vote early and often, I will also cast a second round on behalf of the silent majority: Deerslayer, Saint-Simon, Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Divine Comedy (esp. if you are planning to contrast it with the EP version...I find the Blake illustrations in the EP copy completely faded and washed out looking, and I would love to see if the Heritage illustrations, as expected, are superior).
I should be most interested to see these, which I do not yet have:
The Virginian by Owen Wister/William Moyers
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe/William Sharp
Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm/Lucille Corcos (2 volumes)
The Vicar of Wakefield by John Galsworthy/John Austen
Thanks for your excellent blog btw. which I have often enjoyed.
Okay, so after one day's voting, I have four books with at least two votes. We'll see if anyone alters the lineup before I announce anything, though.
82) You're very welcome. :) I'm glad it's proven useful to you. 84WildcatJFEdited: Jan 18, 2012, 11:40pm
UPDATE - The site should be back to normal now.
Just to let you all know, the George Macy Imagery is protesting SOPA/PIPA today, so the blog won't be accessible. It'll be back up tonight after 8PM PST.
Just a reminder to get your votes in before Saturday! I delayed Henry Adams, so both him and Cellini will be posted this Sunday (if I have the time - I'm a university student now, and man, there's a lot of reading!). 86WildcatJFEdited: Jan 28, 2012, 2:16pm
Okay, I've gotten the votes tallied. One thing, though - Huxley, I actually have done the poetry of Poe already - I mistakenly forgot to put that up on the site's contents. XD Here's the link: http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/heritage-press-the-poetry-of-e...With that in mind, I can declare three books as winners, and the rest are all tied at one a piece. Let's get the winners out of the way first: The Vicar of Wakefield Peer Gynt Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Those are guaranteed to be done for February. However, we will need a tiebreaker of some sort. So, I'll put up the books everyone had voted for prior and do a quick second vote, since three got to progress. Which of these would you like to see as the fourth post? The Coverly Letters/Gordon Ross Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson/Miguel Covarubias Penguin Island by Anatole France/Malcolm Cameron Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus and Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley/John Farleigh The Virginian by Owen Wister/William Moyers The Jumping Frog and Other Stories by Mark Twain/Joseph Low (Conn.) Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe/William Sharp The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio/Fritz Kredel Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm/Lucille Corcos (2 volumes) You can vote for four again, and some can even do the same four, but hopefully one will win out and I can proclaim a fourth book for February without a further tiebreaker. Let's set this one's due date for January 31st, so that I can maximize my votes. For fun, let's add a LEC to that list. Which of the three LEC's I recently acquired would you like to see in February? Memoirs of Saint-Simon/Pierre Brissaud (would be able to do a Heritage comparison) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome/John Griffins Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas/Edy Legrand None have letters, just to note. This one is also due by January 31st. Let's allow one vote here. Thanks everyone! 87kdweberJan 28, 2012, 5:30pm
Penguin Island
Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound
Green Mansions
and Memoirs of Saint-Simon for the LEC selection
Coverly Letters
Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Decameron
For LEC - Memoirs of Saint-Simon
From the looks of things, Prometheus Bound/Unbound and Saint-Simon's Memoirs are the winners! So, as our final results:
The Vicar of Wakefield
Peer Gynt
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Prometheus Bound/Unbound
Memoirs of Saint-Simon
I've also got Education of Henry Adams and Cellini's Autobio to do, too. So February ought to be a good month (if I don't get too swamped with school work!). Thanks everyone for your participation!
This is an exciting list! I'm looking forward to seeing them.
I have finally posted the Limited Edition Club Monthly Newsletter and volume announcement (what are these small sized pamphlets actually called?) for Twenty Years After to the Dropbox Shared Site in the folder "1958 Twenty Years After." Uploading to Dropbox was a cinch, but unfortunately, I had to have our receptionist do the scanning and document compiling in Adobe Acrobat as our IT department does not give us full licensed versions.
I got a call earlier this week from a good friend of mine who helps out at a library book sale near where we live, and he was positive he had just received a bevy of Heritage Press titles and wanted me to be able to get the first crack at them. He wasn’t joking – there were over fifty different books, mostly from the Connecticut-era of the Club, with the majority of them complete with slipcases and Sandglasses. I sorted through the lot with my wife and walked away with several books:
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy/Fritz Eichenberg/Vassily Verestchagin (both volumes)
Ferdinand and Isabella by William H. Prescott/Lima de Freitas
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Fritz Eichenberg
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck/Fletcher Martin (Conn.)
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, trans. by Richard Burton/Valenti Angelo (all 3 vol.)
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin/Paul Landacre
Omoo by Herman Melville/Reynolds Stone
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson/Lynd Ward
Sherlock Holmes: The Later Adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle/Sidney Paget et al.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley/Mara McAfee (Conn.)
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope/Donald Spenser (missing Sandglass)
Most are in very good condition. A couple have some spine fading and some have a bit of warping due to some dampness invading the books while they were in storage, but on the whole it fills out my collection quite nicely and checks off several of my most wanted. :) Unless stated above, what I fished out were all New York books, and to top it all off, they were free. :D My massive thanks to my friend John for his kindness! Now, I honestly just scratched the surface with what I took home, so I’ll be returning next month to pick up some more once I do some research and see what makes the most sense for me to pay money for. So this is only the beginning of a massive influx of books into my collection (and I must wonder where I’m going to put any more of them – I just filled my two bookcases with what I got today!).
While I’m thinking about it, I may as well reveal what I was attempting to do via my secret plans. My goal was to utilize my access to my University’s ILL (Interlibrary Loan) system and check out Limited Editions Club books to document for the blog. My own school’s library has been surprisingly forthcoming with what precious LEC’s they have, so I thought I could do the same elsewhere. Alas, it seems that I am quite mistaken. My three stabs at checking out LEC’s, which were Ulysses, Lysistrata and the original Gulliver’s Travels, all failed. I am a little disheartened, but I will see if I can get some that aren’t quite so lucrative. :p Wish me luck!
A very interesting entry, Jerry. I confess I have never read Peer Gynt all the way through, only snippets, though I have read Ibsen's "somber, serious works" mentioned in the Sandglass. Ibsen's plays, like Tennessee Williams, really need flesh and blood actors and a stage for maximum appreciation--although I suspect Peer Gynt may work better on the page than on the stage. I once saw a 16mm film from the early 1940s with a teenage Charlton Heston as Peer, and I must say he had the qualities of Peer, and the look--uncannily, he looked very much like the illustrations of the young Peer in this edition. Your entry has determined me to read this play over the next week!
Wiki disclose the details about Harald Grieg:
=======
Harald Grieg (1894–1972) was a Norwegian publisher.
He was a relative of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Harald's brother Nordahl Grieg was a writer and an active member of the Free Norwegian Forces during the German occupation of Norway. However, Harald's own relationship with the resistance was rather more ambivalent, rendering publishing services to the Germans.
Grieg had been director of the publishing house Gyldendal Norsk Forlag since 1925. Starting in 1940, the Nazi occupation authorities used Gylendal to publish its propaganda material. Noted novelist Knut Hamsun (a friend of Grieg's) was heavily involved in the propaganda project.
Grieg was also chairman of the board of Nationaltheatret. In June 1941 the board rejected subordination under the so-called Ministry of Culture and Enlightenment. This provoked the authorities, and Grieg, board member Francis Bull and theatre director Johannes Sejersted Bødtker were arrested. Grieg was incarcerated at Grini concentration camp, but was later released. Knut Hamsun's son Tore Hamsun was installed as acting director of Gyldendal publishing house.
After the war's end, in 1945, Harald Grieg returned to his old post and remained director until 1970.
================
97) I hope you enjoy it, Robert. :) It's a nice book indeed.
98) Thanks for sharing. The Sandglass scratched the surface of his career, but it didn't really go that deep into detail as Wikipedia does here. I will make some edits to Grieg's bit - I assumed he was Jewish due to the words "concentration camp", but it seems that the Nazis were more than happy putting anyone who displeased them in camps. Fascinating.
>100 Jerry, the Life of Benvenuto Cellini was first issued in July, 1949. From my research, this is apparently the only time it was issued, although I remember having this book in the late 1960s when I was a member of the Heritage Club, but checking Bussacco's Checklist, there is no record of it having been issued after Series N (June, 1949--May, 1950). Unhappily, I sold that edition in the 1970s so I don't have the Sandglass, but I do have the LEC edition and Monthly Letter and can add a few interesting facts. Cellini's autobiography was among the most requested books in the polls conducted of the LEC subscribers in the early years of the Club. Symond's translation was very popular, but I imagine what particularly stimulated interest was the very successful 1934 motion picture, "The Affairs of Cellini," starring Frederic March (an early and lifelong LEC subscriber, incidentally, and friend of Macy's), which was not really based on the Life but on the play "The Firebrand," by Edwin Mayer (who later adapted it as a musical with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin). When it was decided to issue the autobiography, a contest was held by the LEC for book illustrators (the Life was one of 30 titles submitted to over 400 illustrators), and the title most chosen for illustration by these worthies was Cellini's book. Cyril Bouda, C. Pal Molnar, and Valenti Angelo were among the artists who sent in sample art for Cellini, but the judges felt Kredel's samples captured best Cellini's nervous, and yet meticulous style. The Officina Bodoni was chosen "for sentimental and practical reasons," but apparently Signor Mardersteig changed his mind about the design of the book, for though the original prospectus for the LEC series described a 2-volume Life, Mardersteig decided that one large book with double printed columns could hold all the text in a single volume. One senses in the description of this in the Monthly Letter that Macy himself was not a fan of double columns, but nevertheless he praises the way it is laid out. The typeface is Monotype Bembo, a face designed by the great Aldus Manutius, a near contemporary of Cellini, and printed on a 100% linen rag paper made by Cartiere di Maslianica in Milano. The binding was especially woven for the book using a pattern made up of the Florentine lily, and the rampant lion from Cellini's coat-of-arms. The binding is identical to the Heritage binding, so either the Officina had a lot left over, or it was recreated for the Heritage edition after the war (the war I suspect is the reason the book itself was issued as a Heritage book so long after the LEC version). An interesting followup to the LEC edition was a notice in the Monthly Letter for The Ballad of Reading Gaol--the following month. The Directors of the LEC were compiling a list of the top 50 bookbinders in the world, and were going to send those 50 an offer to bind one of the 50 copies of the unbound sheets for The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (the LEC apparently always made extra sets of pages for each edition). Those that accepted would be paid and all the bound books were to be sent around the world as an exhibition of the state of the bookbinder's art in the late 1930s. Whatever came of this fascinating plan is a mystery--at least to me--and one would love to have known who was on the list, who accepted if the plan was carried through, and what happened to those books?
Thanks, Django. I'll add all that to the post. :)
That last bit is indeed fascinating. Wish I had one of those! 104WildcatJFEdited: Apr 22, 2012, 3:18pm
Hey, I have some spare time! So enjoy the lovely LEC edition of Twenty Years After! http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/limited-editions-club-twenty-y...UPDATE - Well, I spent two hours or so doing this incredibly massive comparison of the two Brothers Karamazov editions done by the George Macy Company. Unfortunately, the comparison is between the 1933 LEC and a Heritage reprint of Eichenberg's 1949 edition, and I'd like to rectify that with a full-on LEC comparison when I can, but it's still neat to compare and contrast the two volumes. The translation and introduction are identical to both, so I suppose it's a matter of preference. Both are quite lovely, though...such difficult choices! http://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/limited-editions-club-the-brot...Enjoy! If I feel up to another post I'll cover the LEC Aeneid in comparison to the Heritage, but I'm a little worn out from writing now.
Great post, Jerry. Although I have the King LEC and the Eichenberg Heritage edition of TBK, I'm hard pressed to say which is the greater achievement, though I'm leaning more and more to King. I'll try to send a scan of the Monthly Letter for the LEC Karamazov this week. As far as extra work for the LEC Crime & Punishment, according to my Monthly Letter, the original wood blocks for the Heritage edition were in Eichenberg's possession and he produced them to be used for the LEC edition. Some blocks were cracked and these were repaired by an Emil Nelson, who also made a full set of copper etchings of all the plates, which ended up being used when some of the blocks cracked during printing of the LEC illustrations. As far as any more work by Eichenberg, as the ML states, the LEC felt it was not "possible to obtain a set of illustrations superior to those which Fritz Eichenberg had made in 1938."
> 105
Are you suggesting you have the ML for the 1933 King version of TBK? If so, please upload this to the Dropbox folder as I would love to read it having recently aquired the books (sans ML).
105) Thanks as usual, Django. I'll try to get my Dropbox program re-installed on my laptop so I can add it to the post later. I'll also add in the notes you provided later on today. ^_^
>106, 107
I uploaded it so check to see I did it right. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to replace my scanner as yet, so these are photos and may not be of the highest standards of clarity. I will re-upload them when I get a new scanner, but hopefully this stopgap measure will suffice for now. 111WildcatJFEdited: May 6, 2012, 11:18am
I checked out two volumes of the LEC Pepys' Diary (1 and 10, and hey, #10 had the newsletter!) and Plutarch's Lives (1 and 8) to document for the blog. :) So expect those after Three Men in a Boat. Also, I may do another Reader's Choice vote for Heritage books since I picked up so many recently. So keep an eye out!
All right, I've gotten my finals wrapped up for the semester, so I have three months or so to work on things I want to work on! Some of that work includes updating the George Macy Imagery, and I'd like to ask you to aid me once more with another volley of Reader's Requests. Again, I'll do the four top voted books, and you can pick five this go-around. I'll start them once I finish the three LEC's I have left to do. Here's the list of eligible titles:
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine/Lynd Ward
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson/Lynd Ward
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo/Lynd Ward (2 volumes)
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson/Lynd Ward
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe/Rene Clarke
Droll Stories by Honore de Balzac/Boris Artzybasheff
The Divine Comedy by Dante/William Blake
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy/Agnes Miller Parker
The Coverly Letters/Gordon Ross
Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson/Miguel Covarubias
Walden by Henry David Thoreau/Thomas W. Nason
The Birds and The Frogs by Aristophanes/Marian Perry (Birds) and John Austen (Frogs)
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey/Zhenya Gay
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne/Valenti Angelo
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, trans. by Richard Burton/Valenti Angelo (all 3 vol.)
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe/William Sharp
The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau/William Sharp
The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Fritz Eichenberg
Resurrection by by Leo Tolstoy/Fritz Eichenberg
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy/Fritz Eichenberg/Vassily Verestchagin (both volumes)
Sherlock Holmes: The Later Adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle/Frederic Dorr Steele, Sidney Paget et al.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle/Frederic Dorr Steele, Sidney Paget et al.
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio/Fritz Kredel
The Singular Adventures of Baron Munchausen/Fritz Kredel
The Republic by Plato/Fritz Kredel (Conn.)
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin/Fritz Kredel (Conn.)
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm/George Him
The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo/Tranquillo Marangoni
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper/Edward A. Wilson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson/Edward A. Wilson (Conn.)
Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley/Edward A. Wilson (Conn.)
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad/Lima de Freitas
Ferdinand and Isabella by William H. Prescott/Lima de Freitas
Waverly by Walter Scott/Robert Ball
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder/Jean Charlot
The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper/Henry C. Pitz
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith/T.M. Cleland
A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe/Domenico Gnoli
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens/Rene ben Sussan
The Chronicle of the Cid, translated by Robert Southey/Rene ben Sussan
The Tales of E.T.A. Hoffman/Hugo Steiner-Prag
Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain/John Groth (Conn.)
Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm/Lucille Corcos (2 volumes)
The Ambassadors by Henry James/Leslie Saalburg
The Virginian by Owen Wister/William Moyers
The Jumping Frog and Other Stories by Mark Twain/Joseph Low (Conn.)
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells/Charles Mozley
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius/Hans Alexander Mueller
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana/Hans Alexander Mueller
Penguin Island by Anatole France/Malcolm Cameron
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen/Per Krohg
The Life of Samuel Johnson/no illust. (Volume II only)
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust/Bernard Lamotte
The Gallic Wars by Julius Casear/Bruno Bramanti
American Indian Legends, edited by Allan A. Macfarlan/Everett Gee Jackson
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll/John Tenniel (Conn.)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck/Fletcher Martin (Conn.)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair/Fletcher Martin (Conn.)
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin/Paul Landacre
Omoo by Herman Melville/Reynolds Stone
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley/Mara McAfee (Conn.)
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope/Donald Spenser
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane/John Steuart Curry (Conn.)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis/Grant Wood (Conn.)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy/Barnett Freedman
Notes from Underground and The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Alexandre Alexeieff
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon/Gian Battista Piranesi
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius/Salvatore Fiume
The History of Rome by Livy/Raffaele Scorzelli
The Federalist or the New Constitution by Alexander Hamilton et al/Bruce Rogers (Conn.)
The Call of the Wild by Jack London/Henry Varnum Poor (Conn.)
Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory/Robert Gibbings (Conn.)
Medea, Hippolytus and The Bacchae by Euripedes/Michael Ayrton
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain/Honore Guilbeau
Poor Richard’s Almanacks by Benjamin Franklin/Norman Rockwell
The Travels of Marco Polo/Nikolai Fyodorovitch Lapshin (Conn.)
The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper/Richard A. Powers
There's a lot more than last time. O_O Let's say May 18th is the last day to vote, and I'll tally them up Saturday the 19th. Choose wisely! :)
An embarrassment of riches! I'll vote or Penguin Island so I can send you some pictures of the Heritage original with Sauvage's illustrations.
113) That would be great! Even if it doesn't win, I'd still like to see those when you can get them to me, Django. :)
Wildcat, thanks ever so much for your hard work. I would love to know more about:
Anna Karenina
Swann's Way
Main Street
She Stoops to Conquer
Toilers of the Sea
I second SophyWestern - your industry is much appreciated, even though I grind my teeth in envy every time you find a bargain in a shop. With no transatlantic postage to pay! Grrr!
(Ignore me. Keep tracking 'em down!)
My choices would be:
1. A Journal of a Plague Year
2. Green Mansions
3. Poor Richard’s Almanacks
4. The Singular Adventures of Baron Munchausen
5. The Birds and The Frogs by Aristophanes
(The Invisible Man and The Coverley Papers are - in their different ways - superb books)
115, 116) Thanks for the compliments! It helps to know the work I do is appreciated. :)
116) Ha, yes, I've indeed gotten lucky a few times. As of late I have no money to buy anything, though. Makes up for the lucky streaks to have long periods of poorness. XD
>117 "Makes up for the lucky streaks to have long periods of poorness."
Sure you don't mean that the other way around?
118) I probably did. :p Sounded great in my head, but maybe not so good in text.
Hm, so far there are 9 entries yet no shared titles. I hope I get a few more votes!
Here is my choice. I’d like to learn more about these books.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey/Zhenya Gay
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe/William Sharp
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder/Jean Charlot
The Republic by Plato/Fritz Kredel
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson/Edward A. Wilson
I should like to see the Russians, I have been skirting around them as I already have other editions sitting around, but now I have almost reached the 400 Macy landmark (300 Lec and 90HP) I find they are a significant proportion of the rest , thus:
The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Fritz Eichenberg
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy/Fritz Eichenberg/Vassily Verestchagin
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy/Barnett Freedman
Resurrection by by Leo Tolstoy/Fritz Eichenberg
Notes from Underground and The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Alexandre Alexeieff
Anna Karenina is the first book with two votes! Yay!
Hm, it would appear I'm going to have one huge tiebreaker to settle unless I see a few additional votes!
I don't know what's going on--the site has been getting very little activity the past few weeks.
>123 I can help by revising my list:
Anna Karenina
Plague Year
Treasure Island
Notes from Underground
>125 Sophy! Both of your deletions are deeply regretted!! Swann's Way is one of the best-illustrated of all LECs, as is Main Street!
125) Sophy, let's wait until the tiebreaker to change votes. I actually have in mind a solid way of doing it with five voters if it comes down to that (as in each of you gets to pick a book, plus Anna Karenina will be done since it has two votes). Six books will win instead of four, but hey, that's fine with me.
>126 oh I do so believe you - I have glimpsed snatches of both in LEC listings on ebay and they look achingly gorgeous.
>127 - thank you so much, you are very kind.
My list:
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo/Lynd Ward (2 volumes)
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey/Zhenya Gay
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad/Lima de Freitas
A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe/Domenico Gnoli
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells/Charles Mozley
Okay, so now Anna Karenina, Journal of a Plague Year and Confessions of Opium Eater have two votes. So there's three of four. I think what I'm going to do regardless if I get anymore votes or not is to allow all of you who voted the opportunity to pick one of your picks that did NOT see two votes. That way everyone ought to be happy. So consider what you'd like to see me cover and let me know as soon as you can. I'll be starting back up next week with the three LEC's and then getting right into these. :) 132WildcatJFEdited: May 20, 2012, 3:01pm
131) You're allowed an extra vote (or three, since you only voiced your hopes for one book earlier), so sure. There's now four books with two votes. My wife wants me to document Penguin Island as well, so it'll definitely be covered.
So, I'll be doing these for sure. Please submit your choice for the one book you'd love to see, all you past voters!
Two Votes:
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey/Zhenya Gay
A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe/Domenico Gnoli
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust/Bernard Lamotte
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy/Barnett Freedman
Honorary Selections:
Penguin Island by Anatole France/Malcolm Cameron (Django)
The Singular Adventures of Baron Munchausen/Fritz Kredel (featherwate)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis/Grant Wood (Conn.) (Sophywestern)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo/Lynd Ward (2 volumes) (civitas)
The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky/Fritz Eichenberg (starkimarki)
Phew! We had a referendum over here last year on whether to replace our first-past-the-post elections with an Alternative Vote system. I'm even more glad now that the proposal was resoundingly rejected. I'm too old to cope!
I'll vote for Main Street. Or if I supposed to choose one from my original list I'll go for Munchausen. 134WildcatJFEdited: May 19, 2012, 10:01am
133) I think it would best to go with people's own personal lists for clarity. So Munchausen it is. If Main Street isn't picked by the original voter, I'll do it first after the requests, because it's an incredible book. 136WildcatJFEdited: May 19, 2012, 8:47pm
135) Will do! :)
civitas, skyschaker and starkimarki get to still make their choices.
I enjoy all of your posts Jerry, but I should particularly like to see Main Street from this list.
My pick of picks: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo/Lynd Ward (2 volumes) My current keep a book in the car so I'll always have something to read book is the Modern Library version. I have a couple of Lynd Ward illustrated LEC's and the Library of America set of his six novels in woodcuts.
138) Done and done. A good choice. I've wanted to do another Lynd Ward book.
137) Main Street is already going to be done, so feel free to pick another from your own list. I certainly have no qualms with doing more Eichenberg! :)
In that case - The Possessed please - it is the most affordable of LEC Eichenberg's Dostoevskis and highest on my list.
Okay, it's been a week or so since I asked all of you to pick a book from your personal lists, and most of you have done that. :) skyschaker has not yet, although I am sure they have been busy with other things. So I'll march on with the books previously selected, and if by then skyschaker has still not made a peep, I'll pick one from their list to cover.
>143 Monthly letter and announcement posted on DropBox.
It's good to have you back to posting, Jerry, instead of doing trifling things like getting an education. Your entry on the Jerome K. Jerome book brings up an interesting point--why did it take so long for the LEC to get around to it? I don't think it because Macy wasn't a fan, because I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that Macy loved British humor (humour), and I believe even included Jerome in the list of humorists he admired (my memory may be misleading me on this). I wonder if it was due to the lack of enthusiasm on the part of his subscribers, who were underwhelmed at an early LEC edition of classic British humor--Surtees' The Jaunts and Jollities of Mr. John Jorrocks. This was an altogether delightful book, with superbly apposite illustrations by Gordon Ross. It fell flatter than a duck's foot when it was issued, and is one of the least sought-after LECs from the Golden Age. Except for Twain, humor on the whole wasn't much in evidence in the Club's output. No E.F. Benson, Wodehouse, Don Marquis, Finley Peter Dunne--but it wasn't that Macy didn't have a sense of humor, as anyone knows who has read any of the Monthly Letters or Sandglasses. He even had published privately The Collected Verses of George Jester, a compendium of risible doggerel with a foreword by Macy's good friend Franklin P.Adams, and an introduction, "George Jester, His Life and Good Times (by the author)." "George Jester" was, of course, Macy himself. The LEC Three Men in a Boat is a beautiful book--I especially like the horizontal format and the striped material on the front and rear boards, so characteristic of the blazers worn by the gentlemen boaters of the period--but I'm chagrined to say that I prefer Paul Cox's illustrations in the 1992 Folio Society edition. I have both books, and love both, but Mr. Cox is the man when it comes to illustrating British humor (I love his Wodehouse illustrations, too).
144) Thanks, kdweber! I noticed it earlier, and I'll get it added.
145) Ah, but if I don't get an education, I won't be getting much further on my collection! :p
Thanks for some insights into Macy's preferences of humor. I may add that into the post as well, if you don't mind.
149) Exquisite, I'll add a link to your post. :) The LEC is excellent looking, and I am envious!
Looking at your images again...they really are mesmerizing aren't they? I was really blown away by the work, never having had read it before. What great editions (LEC and HP) to read this in! 153Django6924Edited: Jul 7, 2012, 12:45pm
The Kredel-illustrated Munchausen is a lovely book, and the technique of using hand-cut rubber plates to apply water-color inks is a technique that Macy often employed for the Heritage Press reprints of LEC books which were hand-colored with stencils. I mentioned in an earlier post somewhere that this technique provides beautiful color, and is only inferior to the hand-colored version in that it is a too-perfect application of color--no variations in color value or thickness of application. I prefer it to the half-tone process that many other publishers used for color reproduction--which can produce color variations, but at the cost of the dot-screen "noise."
Macy was never quite pleased, it seems, with the first LEC Munchausen--principally because he believed the illustrator, John Held, Jr., did not take his job seriously. Actually, it was a bold choice to use Held, who was famous for his comical portraits of flappers and 20s jazz babies and his New Yorker magazine covers to illustrate this piece of Germanic frivolity, and Macy probably thought the chance to do something of more than ephemeral interest would spur Held to create something extraordinary. That he did not is probably true, but what is also true is that viewed today, the illustrations have a good deal of charm and pungency, and their unusual color scheme I find most interesting. Although some have not found the binding to their taste, it is one of my dozen or so favorites of all the LEC bindings--just love those big fish and the marbled paper sides.
For those interested in other treatments of Munchausen, there is the critically-acclaimed Terry Gilliam film, which has benefited from the Monty Python cachet more than its actual merits deserve (in my opinion). I much prefer the German Munchausen, the lush color film made by Josef von Baky in 1943. Despite it being the brainchild of Joseph Goebbels, it is apolitical and quite imaginative, with visual effects that still make me wonder. The Czech animator Karel Zeman did a Munchausen film in his own inimitable style that doesn't owe much to Raspe's original, but is probably the the most artistic of all these.
On perhaps a much lower artistic plane, the vaudeville comedian Jack Pearl impersonated the Baron in a skit that became famous in the 1930s on radio in his own series and in an MGM film "Meet the Baron," where he was supported by the immortal trio of Jimmy Durante, Zasu Pitts, and Edna May Oliver. Dressed in a ridiculously over-decorated uniform, he would tell tall tales to a straight man who would doubt such things were possible--Pearl's response, which became a popular catchphrase that often appears in movies from the 'Thirties: "Vass you dere, Charlie?" One still encounters the phrase today, though its origins in Mr. Pearl's routine have been long-forgotten.
> 153 "..."where he (Jack Pearl) was supported by the immortal trio of Jimmy Durante, Zasu Pitts, and Edna May Oliver."
Not to mention that other immortal trio, The Three Stooges. I see it's available on DVD. I am tempted to try it - it sounds as off-the-dial as my favourite Durante film (also full of ridiculously over-decorated uniforms), the 1936 Richard Tauber vehicle "Land Without Music" (known in the US as "Forbidden Music", presumably in the hope of attracting the same audiences that were flocking to that year's crop of jazz-means-drugs shockers such as The Devil's Weed and Tell the Children).
I saw von Baky's Munchausen at London's NFT forty or so years ago; I agree it is amazing. I think they've discovered more missing footage since then, so perhaps I should revisit it. And visit the 1929 LEC - the "big fish" spine is very enticing, though it's a pity his original design for it seems to be the only example of his Munchausen artwork to be found on the net (it sold at an online auction five years ago for 240 USD - a quarter of the estimate).
Sorry about the lapse, there, everyone. Les Miserables and Swann's Way will be coming up sometime soon, with a wonderful double shot of Penguin Island to follow (thanks to Django).
Another great post, Jerry, and yes, Peter Beilenson designed the multi-volume LEC edition of Le Miz. As the designer/owner of the lapidary Peter Pauper Press, Beilensen was rather an interesting choice to produce this behemoth of novels with what may be the greatest number of illustrations of any LEC.
158) Thanks! I think Angelo's got the highest illustration count in a LEC for 1000 Nights and a Night (which is 1001, if I remember right), but Ward's work here has to be right behind him.
I'll amend my post with your comments about Beilenson. :)
Jerry, as they say, one man's meat.... I am a fan of Lamotte's work (his Notre Dame de Paris is outstanding in its portrayal of Quasimodo, where the earlier illustrations by Masereel fall short for me because he makes Quasimodo look too much like Lon Chaney's Hunchback, a simple bogeyman), and for me these are the perfect illustrations for Proust. Chacun a son gout.
161) You and Macy are in complete agreement! Alas, I just don't get anything from Lamotte, so, as I say, my loss.
>162 Actually, we agree about 90%! I still think he is wrong about John Held, Jr.'s illustrations for Baron Munchausen, and I suspect I might like Rene Clarke's Faust illustrations a lot more than he did. On the whole, his taste was right on more than any other fine press publisher I know. Although others on this site may violently disagree with me, I have to say that I wish Andrew Hoyem had Macy's sensibilities when it comes to picking artists. Whereas George Macy batted at least .667 in his picks, of all the Arion Press books I've seen, there are only 3 that have illustrations which please me enough to where I would buy them; a crying shame since the binding, typography, paper and everything else is so clearly the best to be found in the fine press field today and the equal of anything I've seem from the great publishers of yore.
I know Lamotte only from his paintings for Anatole France's Crainquebille, which seem to me to catch the mood of the book and its dogged street-trader perfectly. I wonder if any of his eighty-odd preliminary sketches for illustrations that Macy didn't use survive... Trivial connections: Crainquebille has been filmed three times; in the last (1954) version he was played by Yves Deniaud, who not long before had been a voice artist on La bergère et le ramoneur, an animated feature film that was released incomplete in 1952 and achieved fame in 1980 when it was re-released in a longer version as Le roi et l'oiseau. One of its animators was Pierre Watrin, who illustrated the 1953 LEC edition of France's Revolt of the Angels.
>164 Very interesting about Le roi et l'oiseau, which I don't know at all but now have to track down. The only film version I've seen of Crainquebille is Feyder's famous 1922 silent film, which is remarkable for its artistic photography showcasing a long-vanished Paris, especially Les Halles.
> 160 It is gorgeous! Thank you so much Wildcat for putting this up.
I'm pretty sure my Sandglass is with the Defoe book--my LEC edition of it didn't have the Monthly Letter, and all the production detail is familiar to me, so I'll check the HP version at the office tomorrow.
I'm working on Main Street, but it will probably go up tomorrow. I've got other things to do!
Jerry, I think it's time to start a Macy Imagery Thread number 3. My laptop sometimes bogs down scrolling to the bottom of this thread! Join to post |  131 members 5,169 messages You must be a member of this group to post.  AboutThis topic is not marked as primarily about any work, author or other topic. Touchstones |
