Now my LEC collection is at 501

After all this discussion of the "79 Villon and the Eichenberg print, I decided to get a copy of the 30s Villon which is presumably, according to the seller, in Fine condition. I wanted to compare the two Villons and get over the 500 hump with #501 of my LEC collection.

My last LEC rebound copy was a beautiful copy of Typee in full bright green Nigerian. Next month I will receive Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambrose Bierce. While this book is avilable in much better condition, no one wanted this copy at $40 so I procured it for rebinding to save it from abandonment or destruction.

The Monthly Letter for the 1979 Villon makes a point of saying that the earlier version, while a beautifully made edition, was marred by "inferior illustrations.' While I don't think Simon's woodcuts are in the same artistic league with Eichenberg's, Parker's, Farleigh's, Bramanti's and Molnar's, their crudeness (of technique as well as subject matter), make them somehow very appropriate for Villon, who was rather a crude fellow himself from what one knows about him.

Whatever you feel about the illustrations, however, as an example of the bookmaker's art, the newer version can't hold a candle to the 1930s version.

Once again I have to say your rebinding projects, motivated by the salvaging of LECs that would otherwise be discarded, is quite commendable.

Btw, I still can't find the 1979 Villon in the Dropbox shared folder. Anyone else able to see it?

>4 UK_History_Fan:

Ken saw it. Just PM me your e-mail and I'll send it to you directly.

Thanks for your remarks, Django. I've never seen the 30s verison of Villon, and will be anxious to compare it against thr 1979 version. Of course I've read about Villon, but have never read his poetry. I've got about five more LECs to get to round out most of the first ten years of the Club (1929 to 1939) except, of course, for the Lysistrata and Ulysses. War and Peace will be a hard one to get in fine condition and expensive to rebind so I'm going to concentrate on the Beaudelaire, the Russian Anna Karenina, and Pride and Prejudice.

> 6 A Russian AK has just been listed on ebay.

On the subject of salvaging LECs (and as an addendum to the "Vandalism" thread), I recently acquired three volumes that I had seen listed for the last couple of years whenever I did LEC searches on abe. They were under the heading of "Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies" and each volume consisted of three plays which had been bound together. The plays in question being: Hamlet; King Henry the Eighth; Julius Caesar; King John; King Lear; Love's Labours Lost; Richard the Second; Richard the Third; Romeo and Juliet. Very sadly six of the plays were without illustrations (which would have been by: Edy Legrand, Eric Gill, Frans Masereel, Boardman Robinson, Mariette Lydis and Agnes Miller Parker). What made me interested in them initially was the fact that Richard the Third was complete with the Eichenberg illustrations, but then I started to think about the plays themselves, and the opportunity to acquire nine letterpress printings of the plays for a very small sum indeed - particularly when compared to the FS letterpress editions, which are also, of course, unillustrated. Anyway, long story short, after getting some images of the volumes and seeing that the quarter Morrocco bindings were sound but with some rubbing, and that the book blocks were in very good order, I negotiated the price to something that I was very happy with and bought the set. Now that I have them, I'm very glad to have done so.

Huxley, I'm totally amazed that the Eichenberg illustrations were still there. The Richard III illustrations are some of Eichenberg's finest (I particularly like the frontispiece ("unless to see my shadow in the sun/And descant on mine own deformity") and the one of Richard in his tent before the Battle of Bosworth with the ghosts of his victims taunting him ("think on me, despair and die"). Except for the fame (notoriety?) of Gill, I don't think the Henry VIII illustrations are all that great in comparison.

PS: I think, though, that it won't be long before you'll succumb to the need to have the Complete LEC Shakespeare! :-)

>8 Django6924: Someone else's lack of taste is my good fortune, I guess. Despite endeavouring to be a glass-half-full type of person, I can't help reflecting on some of the ones from these volumes that got away.

"> 6 A Russian AK has just been listed on ebay."

On Bill Majure's List it is #46, how close was that?

>9 HuxleyTheCat: I have a spare Edy Legrand Hamlet, if you would like to swap it for something.

Thanks Mark. I sent a message to the seller about inside condition. Rebinding requires a very shoddy outside, but a pristine inside. Sometimes the two conditions are hard to reconcile.

>10 starkimarki: Thanks for the offer Mark, but as Django points out in >9 HuxleyTheCat: it won't be long before I succumb to the need to have the whole set as originally published. I just have to amass a significant amount of cash in the book budget first!