Abel Vallmitjana

During the Second Spanish Republic (1931 - 1939) the government of Catalonia was granted far greater autonomy and, alongside the improvements it made in health, education and civil rights, came an explosion of cultural activity. One individual involved in this growing Catalan cultural assertion was the painter, sculptor, engraver, musicologist, teacher and illustrator of the book in the photographs, Abel Vallmitjana (1910 - 1974).

In 1932 Vallmitjana was one of the founders of the Catalan group Adlan (Amics de l'Art Nou, Friends of New Art) that aimed to promote contemporary avant-garde art. One of its main achievements was to stage an exhibition of twenty-five of Picasso’s paintings that the artist himself had a strong hand in selecting. It was originally held in Barcelona in 1936, before traveling in the same year to Bilbao and Madrid, and successfully re-introduced Picasso to the Spanish public, who had seen little of his work since the beginning of the century.

The Spanish Civil War (1936 -1939) led him to emigrate in 1938 to Venezuela, where he continued to be an eminent figure in academic, literary, artistic and folklore circles.

In his later years, Vallmitjana made several documentaries and also illustrated many books. He remained actively involved in art till the end of his life, attending shortly before his death, the inauguration ceremony of the Museum of Modern Art that he had established in the Library of Arezzo in Tuscany, Italy. After his death, the city placed in his honour his bronze sculpture The Sister and the Wound.

The book in the photographs is a 1968 Catalan translation of The President by the Guatemalan, and Nobel prize winning, author Miguel Angel Asturias.

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Annie S. Swan

Despite being one of the Victorian era's most popular writers of romantic fiction for young women, since her death most of the 200 novels penned by Annie S. Swan (1859 - 1943) have gone out of print and little scholarly research has been carried out into her work or life. Although on the publication of her novel Aldersyde (1883) she received a letter of appreciation from Lord Tennyson and praise from the prime minister, William Gladstone, who proclaimed it "beautiful as a work of art" for its "truly living sketches of Scottish character," not everyone was a fan. Her critics thought she depicted a sentimental and parochial view of Scotland that according to fellow Scottish author Margaret Oliphant "presented an entirely distorted view of Scottish life."

If Swan failed to leave a substantial literary legacy, she still deserves recognition for her achievements in the political sphere. She not only wrote many novels on the suffragist movement in Britain, but also stood for election in 1922 shortly after women were given the vote by the Representation of the People Act 1918. Even though she failed to get elected, she went on to become one of the founding members of the Scottish Nationalist Party and served as its Vice President.

The book in the photographs is a new edition of her novel Sheila published by Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier.

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Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

The British author and philosopher, Olaf Stapledon (1886 - 1950), may not be the most well-known member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, but he was certainly one of its most influential. Arthur C. Clarke wrote of Stapledon’s novel Last and First Men that "No book before or since ever had such an impact on my imagination." Others he influenced include: Stanislav Lem, Bertrand Russell and C. S. Lewis. He also won critical acclaim from such prominent and diverse figures as: Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf and Winston Churchill.

Throughout his fictional work Stapledon meditated on the concept of the supermind, genetics and, especially, the conflict between man’s higher and lower impulses. In the novel Sirius (1944) these themes are infused into a fictional biography of a dog that has been engineered to have human intelligence.

As a canine with exceptional brainpower, Sirius offers a unique, and often humorous, perspective on humanity from the standpoint of both an alien outsider and one of its members. It is, therefore, with naivety and extraordinary insight that he marvels at mankind’s many wonderful achievements in science and the arts and recoils at its hypocrisies, vanities and sadism.

Throughout the novel this turmoil between the conflicting sides of human nature is one shared by Sirius who, while seeking deeper spiritual growth through knowledge, is not immune from acting on his more base desires. This attempt to wrestle with and reconcile his wolf and human halves is a struggle that eventually leads to a maddening sense of loneliness, despair and alienation.

The book in the photographs was published by Penguin Science Fiction in 1964. On the cover is Paul Klee's In The Land of the Precious Stone, Woldemar Klein Verlag.

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Peter Owen Publishing

While most of its contemporaries have fallen by the wayside or been merged into larger houses, independent publisher Peter Owen continues today, sixty-four years after it was started by its eponymous founder with just £900 and a typewriter. The simple strategy that lies at the heart of its continuing success seems to rest on Peter Owen's personal taste in literature as: when it comes to selecting the books he will publish he says "I have to like them. If I don't like them, I won't do them."

In particular Peter Owen likes international fiction. He is responsible for drawing attention in the English speaking world to the work of writers such as Anaïs Nin and, most notably, Hermann Hesse. Although it may now seem remarkable, he explained that in the fifties "No one had the foresight to get into Hesse, they didn't even know he existed or know who he was" – despite his having won the Nobel prize in literature in 1946." He was also the editor of Salvador Dalí's only foray into fiction and today he continues to champion non English speaking writers, such as Tarjei Vesaas.

He also appears to have a knack for hiring the right people. Describing her as "the best bloody secretary I ever had" his first editor was Muriel Spark, before she found fame as an author.

The books in the photographs are two English language first editions published by Peter Owen: This Business of Living (1961) by Cesare Pavese and Botchan (1973) by Natsume Soseki.

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The Literary Vandalism of James Kelman

James Kelman is the only Scottish winner of The Man Booker Prize, and its most controversial. Opinion was sharply divided among the judges who awarded him the prize in 1994 for his novel How Late It Was, How Late: with some hailing it a work of genius in a similar vein to Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, while another dismissed it as “crap, frankly.”

The furore surrounding his work seems to stem from a perception that it is somehow alien and inaccessible. On the surface it may appear unrefined as: it lacks formal punctuation and is written in a Scottish working class dialect, often with a hefty amount of swearing. Kelman also offers little in the way of a conventional plotline and his characters are not extraordinary people, but those who lead a monotonous, sparse and anxious existence in the hostile margins of society.

However, far from “Literary Vandalism” (as one critic has described his work) Kelman is purposefully dismantling conventional perceptions of what good writing should be. He is a supreme craftsman who carefully considers the placement of every comma and capital letter so that his finely sculpted structure gives an authentic voice to the disaffected and dispossessed.

The beautiful handbound book in the photographs, A Lean Third, is a signed limited first edition of short stories by Kelman, published by Tangerine Press.

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Robert Blatchford: The Forgotton Socialist

Robert Blatchford (1851 - 1943) was an English journalist who made a remarkable contribution to shaping and spreading the popularity of socialism in Britain. Despite, in his lifetime, enjoying widespread influence on everyone from the common man to prime ministers, his name today is mostly neglected and forgotten.

Blatchford came from humble beginnings and was largely a self-educated man. The son of a young widowed actress of limited means, he was a sickly child who rarely attended school. His frequent absences did, however, afford him the time to study the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress and the works of Charles Dickens. He spent his early adult years working in a factory, then the army, before embarking on a career as a journalist.

After working for several newspapers he founded his own, The Clarion, in 1891. With support from the Independent Labour Party the first edition sold more than 40, 000 copies, even though a printing error had rendered most of its pages illegible. By 1910 its circulation had increased to around 80,000, making it one of the most successful socialist publications in Great Britain at that time.

Articles from The Clarion were assembled to form the book Merrie England (1893), which within a few years sold over two million copies in Britain and America. According to The Manchester Guardian, for every British convert to socialism made by Das Kapital there were a hundred made by Merrie England.

The success of his writing can be attributed to its accessibility. The simplicity of his prose style and his emphasis on humanity, rather than the dry economic theories of Marx, meant his work was widely read amongst an increasingly literate workforce, as well as those who were influential in the the Labour Party, including the future prime minister, Clement Attlee. As he stated himself: “Dr Cozier is mistaken if he thinks I took my Socialism from Marx, or that it depends upon the Marxian theory of value. I have never read a page of Marx. I got the idea of collective ownership from H. M. Hyndman; the rest of my Socialism I thought out myself. English Socialism is not German: it is English. English Socialism is not Marxian; it is humanitarian. It does not depend upon any theory of “economic justice” but upon humanity and common sense”.

Blatchford’s participation in spreading the socialist gospel was not merely confined to the page. In addition to his written work, he founded the Manchester branch of the Fabian Society, Cinderella Clubs for children, the Clarion Scouts and Vocal Union. Clarion cycling clubs would travel the country distributing socialist literature and holding mass meetings.

An explanation for why he has been sidelined from greater historical significance may be that he held many opinions that were controversial, even repugnant, to fellow socialists and his leanings became ever more right wing with the passing of time. In his early twenties he had enjoyed a successful military career and that, perhaps, instilled in him his strong sense of patriotism: as he was supportive of both the Boer War and later The British Empire. Furthermore, he relied on advancing his arguments on a more sentimental rather than philosophical or theoretical basis believing, unlike Marxist socialists who advocated internationalism and class consciousness, in the doctrine of Britain for the British (the title of his 1902 book), founded on self-improvement and national self-sufficiency. He increasingly lost support for his opposition to giving women the vote and for condemning religion, choosing after the death of his wife in 1920 to turn increasingly towards Spiritualism.

Whatever his ideological shortcomings may have been, no man did more to help advance socialism at the turn of the twentieth century.

The pocket book in the photographs is a first edition of Dismal England, the follow up to Merrie England. It is a further collection of essays taken from The Clarion and was published by Walter Scott in 1899.

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Life Magazine

The iconic brand Life is undoubtedly associated with photojournalism, but it began in 1883 and continued for its first 53 years as a humour and general interest magazine, similar in vein to the British Punch. During this part of its history it featured some of the greatest writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its day, including Norman Rockwell.

In 1936 it was acquired by Time founder, Henry Luce, who was inspired to transform it into the first all-photographic news magazine by the advent of the 35mm camera that allowed photographers to move away from staid and staged posed photographs to capture spontaneous moments as visual stories. One of its most famous photographs was the image of V-J day in Times Square by Alfred Eisenstaedt that portrays an American sailor uninhibitedly embracing a woman dressed in white.

Selling anything up to 13.5 million copies in a week, it dominated the market for more than 40 years. It ran weekly until 1972 and monthly until 1978, whereafter it continued to be published as intermittent specials until 2002. It returned for a spell between 2004 and 2007 as a weekly supplement of Time and it still sometimes adopts its iconic branding for special occasions.

The issue in the photographs is from a special edition published in 1969 to commemorate the moon landings.

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Ionicus

Ionicus was the pen name of the English illustrator Joshua Armitage (1913 – 1988). During his illustrious career he produced text and illustrations for over 400 books and was a regular contributor to Punch, for which he provided its final cover in 1966.

He is, however, most fondly remembered and associated with the 58 illustrated covers he drew for Penguin’s range of P.G. Wodehouse novels. Many regard his detailed and realistic cartoons (a style that was in contrast to the overly simplified sketches of his contemporaries) as most fully realising Wodehouse’s recurring fictional location, Blending’s Castle.

His pen name derived from his first Punch commission that depicted two ionic columns and also reflected his great love of architecture.

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The Penrose’s Pictoral Annual

Penrose’s Pictorial Annual was an illustrated review of the graphic arts and its processes that ran for almost ninety years between 1895 and 1982. The aim of the publication was to discuss and demostrate the latest innovative techniques and materials that had emerged within the industry in the course of the previous year. This meant various sections were bound in different paper stocks and ink, with some pages containing tip-ins and fold outs.

As its Editor R.B. Fishenden explained in the jubilee 50th edition in 1956: “The shaping and fabrication of every volume is an adventure. Each is the outcome of a wonderful co-operative spirit – surely unique in a publishing endeavour – which seems to gain impetus in time.”

The annual started life in 1895 as the Process Work Yearbook – Penrose’s Annual. It was originally a kind of catalogue to promote the materials and machines for sale from a company founded by chemist A.W. Penrose and the journalist William Gamble, who were both interested in the pioneering processes of photography and making them more widely available. The publisher Lund Humphries began printing the annaul in 1897 and by 1906 had taken full control. He was also a pioneer in printing techniqes and had in 1904 installed the first Monotype machines at his Bradford works. Unsurprisingly, the industry would eagerly await each issue and often base their investment decisions on Penrose’s advice.

Although profitable for many years it struggled from the 1960s with soaring costs and a decline in cirulation, partly brought about by a proliferation of other graphic design magazines and cheaper printing techniques. It still, however, offers a fascinating insight into the early evolution of the graphic design industry.

The book in the photographs is the 1907-1908 Annual.

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Thank you toutplacid for submitting this wonderful illustration.

http://toutplacid.tumblr.com/post/110849062046/alfred-de-vigny-poesies-choisies-aquarelle

Hector Bizerk Nobody Seen Nothing The Sketchbook

Hector Bizerk are a Scottish hip hop band from Glasgow on the cusp of breaking through into the mainstream. Whilst influenced by the American music scene, they don't pretend to be anything other than themselves. Largely based on his experiences growing up in a deprived area of Glasgow, rapper Louie's lyrics provide cutting social commentary: battling hypocrisy and pretentiousness with refreshing wit, integrity and honesty. The quality of his words has won admiration beyond the music scene, from the likes of Scotland's national poet Liz Lochhead, who has performed one of their songs.

Accompanying Louie is the the brilliant Audrey Tait on drums who was a finalist of last year's Hit it Like A Girl competition. She is also the band's producer and was the first female to recieve a nomination for best producer for the Scottish Album of the Year Awards. This is truly a rare partnership of real equality.

The book in the photographs is part of a limited print run of 100 copies, published by Walk Tall Recordings. The words are taken from the band's 2014 Album and feature illustrations from Pearl Kinnear.

You can see Hector Bizerk play live at this year's South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW).

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William Heath Robinson

The term “Heath Robinson” first entered the British lexicon during the First World War as a means of expressing overly elaborate and implausible machinery built to accomplish simple tasks.

The man the term referred to was William Heath Robinson (1872 -1944), an English illustrator and writer who, by the 1930s, had become known as “The Gadget King.” His early career involved illustrating books such as Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Arabian Nights. In 1902 he published his own children’s book The Adventures of Uncle Lubic, which is regarded as his first foray into the world of equally marvelous and ridiculous contraptions.

In the run up to World War One he made a name for himself in magazines, such as Tatler and The Sketch. His sketches satirized man’s reliance on technology by depicting complex machines, often powered by steam boilers or kettles with pipes and levers, designed to fufil mundane tasks like peeling a potatoe. They were operated by bespectacled, portly men, blissfully unaware of the absurdity of their creations.

During the Second World War the term “Heath Robinson” was adapted to fit with a culture of “make do and mend” and was applied to ingenious temporary fixes from whatever was nearest to hand, often string and tape. In fact, one of the automatic analysis machines built for Bletchley Park during the Second World War to assist in the decryption of German message traffic was also named “Heath Robinson” in his honour.

Although it would be difficult to find examples of his work in exhibitions, his spirit continues to thrive with his undoubted influence on the likes of Aardman Animations’ Wallace and Gromit.

The book in the photographs is an example of some of his earlier work.

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Penguin Famous Trials

The books in the photographs are three volumes from Penguin’s Famous Trials series. All ten books in the series had green covers with the exception of volume seven, which describes the three trials of Oscar Wilde at the Old Bailey, and was orange.

The series was founded by Harry Hodge in 1941, who was the Managing Director of William Hodge & Co and was well known in the Scottish courts as one of the foremost expert shorthand writers. The series was an abridged version of The Notable British Trial Series, which Hodge had previously established in 1905. This series, beginning with the trial of Mary Queen of Scots in 1586, had by 1959 issued 85 volumes and forms an unparalleled library of criminal trials.

According to his son, James, "My father thought that the public got little chance of knowing what actually went on in the Courts, and thus the idea of publishing trials germinated; my grandfather, who founded the family firm of publishers of Scot’s Law in 1874, and who like my father was a shorthand writer in his day, thought little of the idea, but he was in Glasgow, and the scheme went ahead."

The series focused on the trial rather than the crime and cases were selected according to whether they were deemed to have had a notable influence on law and society. Although he would later modify his view, Hodge originally believed that a trial should be at least twenty years old before it can prove itself to have been notable. He also carefully selected his editors and insisted on the greatest possible accuracy in the presentation of the trials.

After his death in 1947 his son James succeeded him as editor of The Notable Trials Series and Penguin Famous Trials. In 1948 he also went on to produce the first volumes in the War Crimes Trials Series.

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Harper’s Magazine

In June 1850 Harper's Magazine was launched with an initial press run of 7,500 that sold out immediately. By 1868 it had an estimated circulation of around 2 million, a figure that has not been surpassed by any similar magazine published ever anywhere in the world, and it remains today the second oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S.

It was founded by top New York book publishers Harper & Brothers, which later grew into HarperCollins. Although the stated aim was to "place within the reach of the great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the Periodical Literature of the present day," it was also intended to promote the authors whose books its proprietors published. As their catalogue consisted mainly of British authors, the first issue contained two short stories by Charles Dickens. The magazine soon, however, began to publish new works by American writers, including portions of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, which made their first appearance in the October 1851 issue. It was also the first publication to make extensive use of woodcut illustrations. 

Today it continues to cover politics, society, the environment and culture through long-form narrative journalism and essays. It maintains an emphasis on fine writing and original thought and its contributors range from promising new writers to more distinguished voices, such as Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith.

The books in the photographs are two leather bound volumes of the European Edition, containing issues dating from 1883 - 1885.

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Nicolas Bentley drew the Pictures

The original cover for T.S. Elliot’s collection of poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939) about feline psychology and sociology, was drawn by the author. The book was quickly re-published in 1940 to include these marvellous illustrations by Nicolas Bentley (1970 – 1978).

The son of the popular English novelist and humourist, Edmund Clerihew Bentley and the godson of G.K. Chesterton, Bentley worked as a clown, film extra, salesman and fireman before he was able to pursue the career he wanted as an illustrator and cartoonist. In 1951 he was also one of the founders of the publisher Andre Deutsch.

Bentley dropped the ‘h’ from his forename so that his signature could appear symmetrically in two lines and regularly used the byline of ‘Nicolas Bentely drew the Pictures.’

The book in the photographs is an eleventh edtion and was published by Faber.

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Mark Kostabi

In the 1980s Mark Kostabi (1960) was one of the darlings of the East Village art scene, winning the “Proliferation Prize” from the East Village Eye for being in more art exhibitions than any other New York artist. His work questions who makes art and who owns it, and whether a painting can ever be said to be the work of one man. He also cultivated a highly flamboyant and outrageous persona that often won him few friends. At the height of his fame he opened Kostabi World, a Warhol-like art factory that churned out hundreds of painting costing thousands of dollars by paid assistants. There he installed a peep-show window and charged people a quater to view his creative team at work.

In the 1990s Kostabi found himself on a downwards trajectory. In addition to the collapse of the art market, his publicist was convicted of conspiracy to defraud after selling fake paintings bearing Mr. Kostabi’s signature. His attempts to reclaim the spotlight later became the subject of Michael Sladek’s documentary Con Artist.

Kostabi currently divides his time between New York and Italy. He produces his own cable TV show, The Kostabi Show, where notable art critics and celebrities compete to title his work. Guests who have appeared on the show include director Michel Gondry and Sex Pistol Glen Matlock. He has also designed album covers for Guns ‘N’ Roses (Use Your Illusion) and The Ramones (¡Adios Amigos!). His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.

The book in the photographs, Sadness because the Video Rental Store was Closed, featuring a selection of his work, was published by Abberville Press in 1988.

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John Minton

The darkly intense illustrations for this first edition of The Country Heart by H.E. Bates is the work of the artist John Minton (1917-1957). Although he was a prolific painter, posthumously, he is remembered more for his book illustrations, including A Book of Mediterranean Food and French County Cooking, the first two books by the woman who is credited for introducing post-war Britain to Mediterranean cooking, Elizabeth David.

Minton was a key figure in the British Neo-Romanticism movement of the late 1930s and 1940s, alongside artists such as Michael Aryton, with whom he shared a studio in Paris during 1938-1939. Between 1945 and 1956 he had seven solo exhibitions and was also an influential teacher of illustration at the Camberwell College of Arts and Central School of Art and Design in London. Although well respected by the Royal Academy and the modernist London Group, he was at odds with the abstract trend that became increasingly popular during the 1950s. His attempts to stay relevant by painting subjects, such as James Dean, largely fell flat.

The brooding sadness of his work was a direct reflection of his personality: he was an alcoholic with psychological problems who eventually committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

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