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CHRISTABEL, KUBLA KHAN, FANCY IN NUBIBUS, AND SONG FROM ZAPOLYA.
(London: Eragny Press, 1904). 212 x 138 mm. (8 3/8 x 5 1/2"). 41, [1] pp., [1] leaf (colophon, device). One of 226 copies on paper (and 10 on vellum).
Original patterned paper boards, gilt titling on front cover. Woodcut frontispiece by Lucien Pissarro; elaborate color woodcut border on first page of text and woodcut initials throughout designed by Lucien Pissarro and cut by Esther Pissarro, woodcut device on last page. Printed in red, green, and black in Brook type. Tomkinson, pp. 64-65; Urbanelli, p. 122. The very slightest of rubbing to the corners, titling on front cover partly oxidized, the free endpaper at front and back with the usual offsetting from pastedown glue, but still a very fine copy, with no internal signs of use.
This is a lovely printing of four Coleridge poems from a press that was very much the work of the husband-and-wife team Lucien and Esther Pissarro. Operated between 1894 and World War I, the Eragny Press produced charming books of the highest quality, but in design unlike the other major private presses at work in England. Lucien was the son of the Impressionist master Camille Pissarro--a major funder of the press--and he brought an artist's perspective to the process. According to Urbanelli, "The Eragny Press was truly a labor of love. Whereas [William] Morris and [Charles] Ricketts never actually printed at their presses [Kelmscott and Vale, respectively], Lucien and Esther designed the books, engraved all the blocks, set the type and blocks together, then painstakingly proofed and editioned all their work, occasionally hiring a printer to assist." The Eragny books were especially renowned for their printing of color wood engravings, and the beautiful results of the Pissarros' work in this respect can be seen here. Mead tells us that Lucien sent the woodblocks for "Christabel" to Esther "with a request 'for prints in the cold tone of moonlight.'" Esther achieved this admirably, using soft tones of gray-green that evoke a moonlit wood. Franklin proclaims that "the Brook type, on the white paper of the small pages in Eragny books, was the most beautiful fount invented in this whole period." Designed by Lucien, the typeface was named for their home, The Brook. Eragny Press books in their fragile boards are now extremely difficult to obtain in the agreeable condition seen here. (ST20292)
Price: $1,800.00