Thee are survivals from a large collection
of little books curated 1967-2000
I shed my obsessive library some 15 years ago
These are ones still stashed away in storage boxes
A hard-bound facsimile edition was produced
recently but the fragile originals are quite scarce
Published in 1918
With its wise epigraph
One of the most distinquished of
Greenwich Village writers & of course beyond
This being a posthumous publication of epigrams
issued by The Hanuman Press
Tuli Kupferberg was one of The Fugs
He is referenced in Ginsberg's poem "Howl"
as having jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge & lived
("not even a free beer")
Tuli was an early DIY (do-it-yourself) publisher
for a long stream of pamphlets & periodicals
This and the following item
are tales told in drawings by
French artist Theophile Steinlen
Reproduced in the 1960s by
The Museum of Fine Art in Boston
My favorite is this tutelary tale
of a young man who was too fond
of his pipe
The Blessed Damozel by Rossetti
1908 UK edition
Illustrated throughout with watercolors
by Paul Woodroffe
Cover art by another artist
A rare booklet by the celebrated American poet
1970s
My professor and friend
Hiroshige's Tokaido Goju-Santsugi
(The Fifty-three Stages of Tokaido)
Woodcuts finely reproduced in miniature
pasted into a fold-out "accordion" binding
with texts in Japanese & in English
Early 20th Century
1 September 2021
