I just bought my first Nonesuch Press book

I was trading in recently culled books at my favorite St. Louis used bookstore and found a Nonesuch Press edition of Les Liaisons Dangerous (translated as Dangerous Acquaintances). It was published in 1940 and printed in France with hilarious illustrations of half-clothed and unclothed French aristocrats bed-hopping.

I had never seen an actual Nonesuch Press edition before (just reprints of the Dickens volumes). The book seems to have a lot in common with Limited Editions Club, except the illustrations don't quite jump out the same way. I got on-line to research a little and found that in fact George Macy from LEC was involved with Nonesuch and, in this era, had largely taken control of it from its founder.

The founder of Nonesuch wanted to create well-designed books, but publish them at commercial presses to make them affordable to the general public. This one was printed in France. The illustrations are line drawings with added color, but the color is not hand-drawn per edition, as it is in some LEC books.

The book does not have a limited press run like LEC, but appears to be more hand-crafted than the Heritage Press versions of the LEC titles.

I think I've found a new obsession!

Does anyone else have experience with Nonesuch editions or can share more information about them?

pm11, you are indeed correct in all particulars. The Nonesuch Press was founded by Francis Meynall, who with Bruce Rogers was one of the Grand Old Men of 20th century fine press design. George Macy was indeed on the Board of Directors for the Nonesuch Press, and, ironically, was heavily involved in the publication of the Nonesuch Complete Shakespeare some 8 years before bringing out the LEC Complete Shakespeare using the same First Folio-based text as emended by Farjeon. Later, when wartime exigencies and economy made the publishing in England untenable, the Nonesuch editions were published largely under Macy's supervision, and the books were offered as selections to members of the Heritage Club. This is especially true of a famous series, Ten Great French Novels, of which your Laclos volume is one. Interestingly, you can find identical examples of these works marked as Heritage Press--these would be reprints after the war when the Nonesuch operations were resumed in England. Meynall resumed control of the press by 1950, and though he still designed an occasional LEC, which he had done from the beginning, he took the press in another direction from the LEC's.

The earliest publications by Nonesuch remain benchmarks of fine press work: the Shakespeare, as mentioned, the legendary Nonesuch Dickens, which the FS and others are now reprinting; the 5 volume Holy Bible, especially in the very limited (75 copies) version bound in morocco on unbleached rag paper, the Nonesuch Homer and The Divine Comedy, and the complete works of authors such as Wycherly, Congreve, Dryden and, especially, William Blake, are highly desired and astronomically priced. The books produced in the 1939--1950 time frame are more reasonably priced, and during this time they did newer, less luxurious versions of the Bible and Shakespeare, and these often come up priced similar to LEC editions (though less finely made, in my opinion).

Nonesuch always emphasized printing, and some of their priciest works contain no illustrations at all. Meynall obviously didn't share the love for book illustration that distinguished the books published by Macy, but for some reason, this hasn't kept the editions from the Golden pre-war years from fetching much, much higher prices. Thus the Nonesuch Don Quixote with the inferior Motteux translation brings 2-3 times the price of the early LEC Cervantes, with the wonderful Ricart illustrations. (Granted, this particular Nonesuch has porchoir illustrations by E. McKnight Kauffer, but it was issued unsigned by that artist--who certainly didn't have the stature of Ricart.) But the Nonesuch Shakespeare and Homer are not--nor are the dramas from Dryden, Wycherly, etc., all of which fetch thousands of US dollars when offered on the market.

Django,
I knew I could count on you to help expand my knowledge base. I think these are great books and definitely want to add them to my growing list of LEC and Heritage Club editions. I think I will just treat them as cousins for shelving purposes. I also just picked up a great LEC edition of Zadig by Voltaire. The book was printed in France, as well, with beautiful paper and great illustrations. The bookseller all but gave me an LEC Bel Ami when I bought the two together. At one time, he bought a library of nearly 600 LECs and these were among his last couple editions.

Nice score, pm11! I have been trying to pick up a nice LEC Zadig for quite a while on eBay, but I always get outbid at the last minute.

600!!!! That was one impressive collection! It must have included every book they ever published, as there had been just over 250 LECs when Macy died in 1956.

I actually gently questioned the 600 as he suggested that the lady had collected between the 40s and the end of the 60s. I presume a more accurate description was several hundred. Nonetheless, I would have loved to have had a shot at more than the few remaining.

pm11, I remember a few years ago that the LEC collection of a famous Hollywood composer was for sale, and it included every LEC publication from the beginning to 2003. All the LEC ephemera, Monthly Newsletters, Prospectuses, etc., were included and the condition of all was "Fine" or "Near Fine." It was being offered for $100,000 US, and I see it is no longer listed. Hopefully some library bought it, as even the George Macy Collection at Columbia, Macy's alma mater, doesn't have nearly a complete collection.

That amazes me. Are there any complete collections at other universities or museums? There is a great collection at the Nasvhille Public Library, but also not complete.

The University of Texas has an extensive collection of the original artwork used to illustrate many of the books, which must be fascinating (and valuable--considering the artists involved), Dartmouth College has a collection of Macy's personal papers, primarily correspondence, and Syracuse University has a large collection of LEC ephemera.

Aside from the book collections at Columbia U. and Nashville, I think the UCLA library has a sizable collection, but I think they are not organized as a separate collection and are part of the library's circulating collection.

Django...just out of curiosity is there a good resource out there for information on the early 20th century publishers?

Not that I know of, chase. It's hard to believe that there are no definitive studies of the FIne Press movement in America, but I have never seen one.

>7 pm11:/8

Resurrecting this thread as I was doing a little surfing related to the Nonesuch / Heritage collaboration.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford had a collection of LEC volumes as one of its Special Collections. Here's the entry (which unfortunately doesn't give too much of an indication as to what they have):

"Limited Editions Club A collection of over 500 publications of the Limited Editions Club, New York, from 1929, began to be formed in 1964 when the funds of Bodley’s American Friends enabled the Library to secure a subscription to the Club."

>11 HuxleyTheCat:

Does anyone on this forum live near Oxford? I'd love to know what they have.

I have tried to collect as many LEC as I can afford from the founding of the press to the last books published under the aegis of Macy's family. Some I know I will never own--the Ulysses and the Lysistrata will always be out of my price range. Some I have seen but have held out for a better copy--a plan that may prove futile in the long run, as some of the volumes seemed to have been either underappreciated and abused by previous owners, or because they are too much appreciated and the pristine copies never appear for sale. The most notable example would be The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of which I have only seen a few examples for sale, and of those, the leather spines have crumbled as badly as the design of the columns. (Huxley, you were incredibly lucky to find the one you did for the price you paid!) The leather bindings on the LEC Moby Dick volumes I have seen for sale are in similar dilapidated conditions. I would hope the Bodleian Library would have pristine copies in their collection.

I'll make a few enquiries.

For those interested, the Bodleian's LEC collection can be accessed via the following link:

http://bit.ly/9KeIpN

(Thanks mboudreau)

The numbers don't quite tally up with the 500 claimed.

>15 Django6924:

Yes, their librarian seems to have been a tad nonchalant about accuracy. One of the items catalogued on the first page I looked at, Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That was never a LEC edition (more's the pity).

> 15 I completely agree - it was the lack of standardisation in the records that immediately struck me. I suppose that's what happens when you let the academics play in the librarians' sand pit ;-) But, this is Oxford and they do things their own way.

>14 HuxleyTheCat:: If you wouldn't mind replacing that very long link with this shortened version:

http://bit.ly/9KeIpN

it would resize this page to a readable width. :-)

I've no idea how you did that, but many thanks.

Having followed you here from the Folio Society Devotees group, I should probably thank you as well--or blame you for enabling my growing addiction. (I'm on an errand tomorrow to acquire my first LEC publication, if someone hasn't beaten me to it. If successful I'll post details.)

The URL shortening is done by http://bit.ly, which will take any URL you give it and hand back a shortened version. http://tinyurl.com will do the same thing. I usually prefer to keep a URL with some human-readable bits, but on a forum page like this, the shortening can be a great convenience.

> 19 "Having followed you here from the Folio Society Devotees". Good lord, that sounds suspiciously like cyber-stalking! :-)

Well, I hope your errand proves fruitful and will certainly look forward to a (hopefully) positive report. Please be warned, in February I bought my first LEC book, next week I will probably be up to fifteen with an ever-increasing must-have list. 'Addiction' is right - but please don't blame me, it's all Django's fault!!

Thanks for the link - really useful (and added to my favourites).

> Huxley: Oh dear, not what I meant. Only that I arrived in this formum and found you--and other FS Devotees--already here.

The errand was a success, and I have just come home with the LEC edition of The Devil's Dictionary, quarter-bound in red and black leather and black cloth with gold trim, with red and black marbled endpapers. As one of the store owners was taking my credit card, the other asked "Who did the illustrations for that?" I said "Fritz Kredel". He said, "Oh, he probably marked it up in the back with his name, didn't he?"

> 22 Aw shucks, I was quite flattered!

Response to your purchase over on the GMd forum.

I recently purchased some LEC ephemera and came across an interesting letter relating to the Nonesuch Press, and to the crown jewel of the Press--the Nonesuch Dickens. It really belongs on the George Macy Devotees page, so look for it over there.