“A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” in The Monthly Magazine, or British Register of Politics, Literature, Art, Science, and the Belles Lettres.
Provenance: The Alain de Suzannet-Kenyon Starling-William Self copy.
Many first attempts in the literary arts are remarkably modest, with little foreshadowing of fame. Charles Dickens’s first appearance in print was so tentative as to now be rarely written of, largely forgotten, and extant in just a few copies in private hands.
“A Dinner at Poplar Walk” is a humorous sketch of a party: a wealthy old bachelor is forced to spend an evening with disagreeable relatives and make a speech. Dickens, years after this story appeared in the Monthly Magazine, said that he left the manuscript “stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street.” Published in the December 1833 number of the Monthly Magazine, Dickens was nonetheless never paid for his story—in fact, he had to pay two shillings and sixpence to a bookseller in the Strand to get a copy of his own story in print.
Dickens’s story isn’t a great piece of writing: it’s inferior to both the work of his contemporaries and, of course, to the great fiction that he would soon produce. But despite its shortcomings, the sketch is inspirational. It reminds me that we all made a start at one time and that all artistic and scholarly success began with that first attempt.
Dickens’s story isn’t a great piece of writing: it’s inferior to both the work of his contemporaries and, of course, to the great fiction that he would soon produce. But despite its shortcomings, the sketch is inspirational. It reminds me that we all made a start at one time and that all artistic and scholarly success began with that first attempt.
Charles Dickens.
Bruce J. Crawford
A. Robertson
1833
London
“At the Cottage of Messer Violi,” in <em>The Hazards of Imagery</em>.
<p>Silkscreen print on Stockwell cartridge paper, 20 x 14⅞ in. No. 5/12 portfolios.</p>
<p>This print is included in a portfolio made up of thirty-six prints—seventeen with poems and nineteen without text. They were created by British printmaker Dale Devereux Barker using a variety of techniques, including etching, silkscreen, linocut, wood-block and photogravure.</p>
<p>Paul Violi was a significant figure in the New York School of Poets, often anthologized (see, e.g., <em>The Oxford Book of American Poetry</em>), and a friend of mine. He taught poetry and poetry writing at the New School, Columbia University and elsewhere.</p>
This work is a reminder to me, as one who is intensely text-driven and serious about my collecting, to not forget the powerful relation of art to language: “We whose hearts have been gripped / by life, scoff at the idea of art / as mere ornamentation …” But the playfulness in Paul’s poetry also says to me: enjoy everything art, literature and life offer, but let's not take ourselves too seriously. For this reminder I thank him often, even now.
Paul Violi (1944–2011).
James J. Periconi
[England:] Dale Devereux Barker,
1998.
[Cleanskins].
Edition of 150.
Each book in Tony White’s Piece of Paper Press series consists of a single A4 sheet, photocopied or desktop printed on both sides. The sheets are then folded to make a sixteen-page booklet, stapled and trimmed by hand. The edition is not distributed commercially.
Cleanskins refer to terrorist suspects unknown to the intelligence services, including Hasib Hussain, who blew up a No. 30 bus in the July 2005 London bombings. With a pen held directly against a sheet of paper, Deas records the motions of a journey on the same bus route (Marble Arch to Hackney Wick).
My primary collecting interest is artists’ books, i.e., books where the artist has had a major say over their final appearance. My collection ranges from 1963 to today. In many respects Cleanskins is atypical of my collection, but it fascinates me. All Piece of Paper Press books show how books are made and that anyone can make a book. But in this case, the artist has also interrogated what narrative is or can be—a journey, usually described in text or photograph, is reduced/elevated to the random movements of a pen.
Stevie Deas.
Stephen Bury
[London]: Piece of Paper Press,
2007.
A Curious Heiroglyphick Bible; Or, Select Passages in the Old and New Testament, Represented with Emblematic Figures for the Amusement of Youth.
The <em>Hieroglyphick Bible</em> is one of my favorite children’s books. It dates from 1783, with woodcuts attributed to engraver Thomas Bewick. Hieroglyphic bibles evolved from emblem books, where images or hieroglyphs served as symbols for intellectual ideas. Adapted over time, the use of hieroglyphics to communicate text shifted to a simpler approach that today we call rebus, which uses pictures to replace some words in each sentence. This bible, meant for young learners, is particular in that its binding of stiff vellum, with hand-painted covers and endpapers, was produced by the Royal School of Art Needlework (founded in 1875), still flourishing today as the Royal School of Needlework. Involved with the RSN were Arts and Crafts luminaries William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane.
Chris Loker
London: J. Barker [etc.],
1812.
A Curious Herbal, Containing Five Hundred Cuts of the Most Useful Plants, which are now used in the Practice of Physick, Vol. I.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries few women authored botanical books. The author and illustrator that started me on collecting botanical books, Mrs. Loudon (Jane Wells), wrote books to pay off her husband’s debts. A century earlier, Elizabeth Blackwell had done the same. Blackwell also had the advantage of receiving advice and encouragement from prominent medical professionals and access to plants at the Chelsea Physic Garden. She not only drew and engraved the plates but also hand-colored them, three processes that were usually executed by separate artists.
During the eighteenth century, explorers finding hitherto unknown flora brought many of these plant specimens back to England. This drove a need by physicians and apothecaries for an herbal that described these new species. A Curious Herbal successfully met this need and also enabled Blackwell to free her husband from debtors’ prison.
Elizabeth Blackwell.
Fern Cohen
London: Printed for Samuel Harding,
1737.
A List of Medals, Jettons, Tokens, &c. in Connection with Printers and the Art of Printing.
<p><strong>One of 100 copies printed for private circulation to collectors, curators, and numismatics dealers. [And:] Paul Dupont. Silver printer’s token of Johannes Gutenberg and Alois Senefelder, [ca. 1836], diam. 1</strong>⅜ in<strong>. </strong></p>
<p>My interest in <em>A List of Medals</em> derives from its close association between the screw-press technology employed in letterpress printing and in the impression of commemorative images and texts onto more permanent gold, silver, and bronze medallic forms. This work also illustrates the personal collection of William Blades and his own desiderata list of printing medals, which appears in multiple, detachable sheets of different colors.</p>
As a collector of printing-related medals, I love this book. My collection includes a portion of medals that Blades also owned, as well as an extremely rare silver token—one of his few desiderata (Plate 3Q)—for the Parisian printer and lithographer, Paul Dupont, that profiles both Gutenberg, the inventor of printing by movable type, and Senefelder, the inventor of lithography.
William Blades (1824–1890).
Earle A. Havens
London: [Privately printed],
1869.
A pair of Indian miniatures.
Watercolor and gold on paper, each 7¼ x 4 in.
I have been collecting Indian miniatures since 1967, when I was introduced to them by my cousin, and then-employer, the bookseller H. P. Kraus. This pair is by far the most personal of the collection. My wife purchased them for me from Otto Ranschburg of Lathrop Harper. They had been in the rare book stock of Herbert Reichner, whose scholarly stock Otto had arranged for me to purchase, and which had been a key component in the founding of my own business. This is their second appearance at the Grolier Club. In 1975 one of my chief mentors, Geoffrey Steele, borrowed them for the exhibition Nature's Handmaid Art: Landscape Architecture from the Garden of Eden to Central Park.
T. Peter Kraus
late 17th c.
Provincial Mughal (possibly Alwar)
A portion of an autograph letter to her daughter, Madame de Grignan, aux Rochers.
The celebrated ėpistoliėre, whose letters to her daughter are a classic of French literature, was in fine form on the day she wrote this one as she was anticipating a visit from her within mere days. (Madame de Sévigné’s letters are so cherished that they were often cut up, as valuable literary souvenirs.)
I love this piece and I especially love the person who gave it to me—my future husband. I suppose you could call it a courting gift. We had just met. My date (Kenneth W. Rendell) was astonished that I was reading something as esoteric as the letters of Madame de Sévigné, in French. I was amazed that he had even heard of her. Amazement turned to wonder when one day he presented me with a fragment of one of her letters. Her pen! Her handwriting! Her voice! On this half page we read that she has just gone to get the post from Paris and there was a letter from ma bonne (her daughter). I was hooked, on him and on collecting.
My collection eventually grew to include letters by many interesting women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially French women. I was able to acquire other letters by Madame de Sévigné, some running to several complete pages, but none ever replaced this morceau in my heart.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626–1696).
Shirley McNerney Rendell
mercredi 15e août.
A selection of autograph letters signed, sent between 1890 and 1896, by Austin to Violet Maxse, later Lady Edward Cecil, and later still, Viscountess Milner.
An astonishing and somewhat inappropriate correspondence between a British poet laureate, writer, politician, polemicist, and gardener and an exceptionally beautiful aristocratic girl, beginning when Austin was 55 and Violet was 18. Austin, infatuated from the moment he met her, writes Violet ardent letters in a style he calls “arrested poetry,” in some cases advising her to destroy his letters (she did not). Many pages bear the stains and shadows of violets, which the author of “The Garden That I Love” had strewn through the letters. At other times Austin asks her to return manuscripts of his latest writings he had sent her to read (again, she did not). This selection is derived from a substantial archive (ca. 1,000 pages) of Austin’s letters and autograph drafts of plays and poems.
Other remarkable men developed their own “cult” for Violet. These included Georges Clemenceau, Rudyard Kipling, Edward Burne-Jones and Cecil Rhodes. She married, firstly, Lord Edward Cecil, whose father, Lord Salisbury, as prime minister, appointed Austin poet laureate, and when Edward died, Viscount Milner, the secretary of war in the World War I war cabinet. (Violet’s only child died in that war.) Daphne du Maurier has described Violet as the “most formidable woman in England.”
Alfred Austin (1896–1913).
David N. Redden
1890-1896.
About Sylvia.
<p><strong>Edition of 50, with lithographs by Enid Mark printed on Arches Velin paper, hand-bound by Sarah Creighton in a chemise of black Tiziano paper from the Fabriano mill, and with title calligraphy by Jerry Kelly. </strong></p>
<p><em>About Sylvia </em>was conceived by Enid Mark, Sylvia Plath’s classmate and friend, and founder of ELM Press. This artist’s book was published during the tenth anniversary of the press, and contains ten poems by poets who knew Plath and by those who reflect on her from the distance of time. Its meaning for me is enhanced by having known and admired both of these women at a formative stage of our lives.</p>
Each of the poems, including those by Diane Ackerman, John Berryman, Ann Sexton, and Richard Wilbur, conveys personal recollections about Plath. The image of shattered glass in these open pages reflects the emotional depths of Robert Lowell’s poetry; his Harvard workshop in summer 1958 introduced Plath to a boldly confessional mode of creative expression.
Enid Mark (1932–2008).
Judith Raymo
Wallingford, PA: ELM Press,
1996.