World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1994, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Exact Change / Boston
$38.00 - In stock -
Andre Breton described Maldoror as "the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to exceed human potential." Little is known about its pseudonymous author, aside from his real name (Isidore Ducasse), birth in Uruguay (1846) and early death in Paris (1870). Lautreamont bewildered his contemporaries, but the Surrealists modeled their efforts after his black humor and poetic leaps of logic, exemplified by the oft-quoted line, "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." Maldoror's shocked first publisher refused to bind the sheets of the original edition--and perhaps no better invitation exists to this book, which warns the reader, "Only the few may relish this bitter fruit without danger."
This is the only complete annotated collection of Lautreamont's writings available in English, in Alexis Lykiard's superior translation. For this latest edition, Lykiard updates his introduction to include recent scholarship.
2005, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$60.00 - In stock -
Scarce 2005 edition published by Creation Books.
The spectre of Gilles de Rais, satanist and child-killer, eclipses French history like a dark star. A fallen general, once the champion of Jeanne d'Arc, de Rais' riches and experimentations led him to the very gates of Hell.
With quotations, essays and fiction, as well as a complete chronology and register of people and places in de Rais' brief but cataclysmic existence, "Dark Star is a rich evocation of the satanic allure of the most intriguing figure in the annals of mass murder.
Features the writings of Georges Bataille, Blaise Cendrars, J-K Huysmans, Valentine Penrose, Angela Carter, Jean Genet, Marquis de Sade, André Breton, Arthur Rimbaud, Gustave Flaubert, Richard Thoma, James Havoc, Charles Perrault, and many others
"Gilles de Rais - one of the most glorious, sinister, enigmatie figures in all European history"—Henry Miller
Very Good copy with some age rippling to the cover laminate. Some foxing to block top.
1974, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 172 pages, 30.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1974 hardcover edition of The Late Richard Dadd, by Patricia Allderidge, published by the Tate Gallery to accompany a major exhibition of Dadd's work that same year. Illustrated with b/w and colour reproductions, this is the first catalogue raisonné of all Dadd's recorded work and includes entries on many items now lost.
Richard Dadd was one of the most strikingly original and technically accomplished painters of the Victorian era. His enormous, almost virtuosic, talents were obvious from an early age, but the brilliant career which seemed inevitably his was cut short, brutally and abruptly, when, as a young man, he lapsed into violent insanity. Dadd’s affliction culminated in the gruesome murder of his father and led to life-long confinement in a criminal lunatic asylum. But even here he continued to paint, fulfilling his early promise of compositional ingenuity, albeit in a mode totally at variance with the conventions of Victorian salon art. Deprived of external influence and stimuli alike, Dadd’s style, especially in his early fairy pictures, combined a singular purity and beauty with a world of tapestry-like detail, rich fantasy and obsessional allegory.
Patricia Allderidge, Archivist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals, where the artist passed much of his imprisonment, is uniquely equipped to be Richard Dadd’s biographer. She has undertaken extensive research, sifting through secondary and little known primary sources, to construct a carefully documented narrative of Dadd’s career, one which corrects many misconceptions and brings new material to light. In addition to tracing the artist’s life from his childhood and seminal travels to the Middle East to his madness and confinement at Bethlem and Broadmoor, Miss Allderidge also provides a detailed and sensitive analysis of Dadd’s work, fully documented with 115 illustrations, fifteen of which are in colour. She has, in short, produced a complete picture, in words and images, of Richard Dadd as both a man and as an artist, and her study will long serve as a vitally informative and attractive introduction to the vision of this extraordinary Victorian painter.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1974, English
Softcover, 108 pages, 29 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Academy Editions / London
$30.00 - Out of stock
First 1974 softcover edition of this monograph on Richard Dadd, by Patricia Allderidge, published by Academy Editions in London. Profusely illustrated with b/w and colour reproductions tracing Dadd's life and work, with texts by Allderidge and notes on all works presented.
Richard Dadd was one of the most strikingly original and technically accomplished painters of the Victorian era. His enormous, almost virtuosic, talents were obvious from an early age, but the brilliant career which seemed inevitably his was cut short, brutally and abruptly, when, as a young man, he lapsed into violent insanity. Dadd’s affliction culminated in the gruesome murder of his father and led to life-long confinement in a criminal lunatic asylum. But even here he continued to paint, fulfilling his early promise of compositional ingenuity, albeit in a mode totally at variance with the conventions of Victorian salon art. Deprived of external influence and stimuli alike, Dadd’s style, especially in his early fairy pictures, combined a singular purity and beauty with a world of tapestry-like detail, rich fantasy and obsessional allegory.
Patricia Allderidge, Archivist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals, where the artist passed much of his imprisonment, is uniquely equipped to be Richard Dadd’s biographer. She has undertaken extensive research, sifting through secondary and little known primary sources, to construct a carefully documented narrative of Dadd’s career, one which corrects many misconceptions and brings new material to light. In addition to tracing the artist’s life from his childhood and seminal travels to the Middle East to his madness and confinement at Bethlem and Broadmoor, Miss Allderidge also provides a detailed and sensitive analysis of Dadd’s work, fully documented with 115 illustrations, fifteen of which are in colour. She has, in short, produced a complete picture, in words and images, of Richard Dadd as both a man and as an artist, and her study will long serve as a vitally informative and attractive introduction to the vision of this extraordinary Victorian painter.
Very Good copy with light bumping/wear to extremities.
1971, English
Softcover, 162 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Athlone Press / UK
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1971 edition of Norma Rinsler's study of life and work of Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855), one of the most important writers of nineteenth-century France, both in prose and in verse. A precursor of the symbolists and the surrealists, Nerval has fascinated many major literary figures, including Proust and Breton, Eliot and Apollinaire, Michaux and Leiris, Artaud and Char. Dr. Rinsler examines the peculiar problems presented by Nerval's recurrent mental illness, its effect upon his creative work and the relationship between prose and poetry in the pattern which emerges. She discusses the predominant themes of his work and the various interpretations to which they have given rise and, while giving her own very personal view, she also outlines the contribution made by other scholars to the study of this most mysterious of poets.
Poet, storyteller, autobiographer, translator, and visionary, Gérard de Nerval (1808-55) explored the blurry boundaries between dream and reality, fact and fiction, imagination and madness in his groundbreaking writings. Nerval was a pioneering modernist, a precursor of the French Symbolists, and a vital influence on writers such as Marcel Proust, André Breton, and Antonin Artaud. His works include Voyage en Orient (Journey to the Orient), Sylvie - which Umberto Eco deemed a "masterpiece," Les Filles du Feu (The Daughters of Fire), Les Illuminés (The Illuminati), and Aurélia - which opens with "Dream is a second life."
VG copy light age/wear.
1991, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
Scarce Creation Classics 1991 illustrated edition of Arthur Machen's first book, "The Great God Pan", once described by The Westminster Gazette as "An incoherent nightmare of sex..." upon its publication in 1894. An unwittingly complimentary description for one of the greatest works of weird horror and decadence, in which Machen unfurls with his singular eye for the bizarre and macabre the tale of a young girl cursed by her unnatural parentage to become a creature of shape-shifting polysexual demi-human evil. This special paperback edition with illustrations throughout by the great Austin Osman Spare. Includes bibliography and introduction by Iain S. Smith.
Good—VG copy with some cover wear.
1993, English
Softcover, 126 pages, 13.5 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$60.00 - Out of stock
"An incoherent nightmare of sex..." That was The Westminster Gazette's description of Arthur Machen's first book, The Great God Pan, upon its publication in 1894. An unwittingly complimentary description for one of the greatest works of weird horror and decadence, in which Machen unfurls with his singular eye for the bizarre and macabre the tale of a young girl cursed by her unnatural parentage to become a creature of shape-shifting polysexual demi-human evil.
Wonderful collectable 1993 Creation Books reprint, with illustrations throughout by the great Austin Osman Spare.
Arthur Machen (1863 – 1947) was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan (1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language."
Very Good copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$40.00 - In stock -
"Censored, banned, and ridiculed upon publication, Oscar Wilde's Salome, written in 1892 in the French language, must now be viewed as one of the greatest of all Decadent texts; an æsthetic masterwork which has seldom been accorded due respect.
Salome is an evocation of biblical horror in which blasphemies abound; more than this, its atmosphere seethes with a dangerous erotic charge from the very outset. Relentless, hypnotic repetitions in the words, arranged in fugue cadences, lend the proceedings a masturbatory, oneiric quality: the tale unfolds with the inexorable acceleration of an orgasmic nightmare.
Aubrey Beardsley's Under The Hill, a short work commenced in 1894 but left unfinished at the time of Beardsley's premature demise, nonetheless achieves the quintessence of Decadence, an evocation of a synaesthetic pleasure dome the equal of Huysmans' A Rebours. This, allied to an extraordinary catalogue of sexual perversion, makes it a unique and indispensable text for any who seek the uttermost extremes of the manifest imagination.
This joint centennial edition of Salome and Under The Hill, united by seventeen of Beardsley's unsurpassable drawings, is a timely rehabilitation of these two all-too-often ignored fin-de-siècle texts, and constitutes a volume of unadulterated Decadent Erotica which must surely stand as the apogee of its kind.
Wonderful collectable 1999 Creation Books edition, with illustrations throughout by the Audrey Beardsley.
Good—Very Good copy with light cover creasing. Ex-libris sticker to inside cover, otherwise a bright copy.
2025, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 20.3 x 13.3 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$42.00 - In stock -
Joris-Karl Huysmans’s semi-autobiographical third novel, first published in French in 1881, signaled the beginning of his break from the naturalism of Émile Zola and his turn toward a “new naturalism” that laid out the negative consequences of determinism and embraced a disgust for human existence and an all-out war against respectability.
Domesticity tells the tale of novelist André Jayant and artist Cyprien Tibaille, two men struggling between the urges of their body and the urges of their soul—between the comforts of coupledom and the ideals of art—and with the failure of matrimony or the artistic endeavor to fulfill the needs of either. More than a psychological character study, though, Domesticity stands as one of the most memorable portraits of late-nineteenth-century Paris: its shops, its eateries, its apartments, and its sad, futile affairs of the heart.
Steeped in sardonic pessimism, this ode to sterility was one of the author’s own favorite novels of his career.
Earning a wage through the French civil service, Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) quietly explored the extremes of human nature and artifice through a series of books that influenced a number of literary movements: from the gray and grimy naturalism of Marthe and Downstream, to the cornerstones of the decadent movement, Against Nature and the Satanist classic Down There, to the dream-ridden surrealist favorite, Becalmed, and his Catholic novels, The Cathedral and The Oblate.
Translated, with an afterword, by George MacLennan.
1992, English
Softcover, 302 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Cornell University Press / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1992 edition.
"This brilliant and substantial study will be required reading for critics of Gothic literature and for feminist theorists. Unlike other psychoanalytic readers who localize the 'horror' in Gothic fiction by interpreting it as an effect of repressed anxiety about motherhood or genital sexuality, Massé regards the horror as systemic and actual, and for this reason her study is far more radical, comprehensive, and satisfying. In the Name of Love is challenging and engaging reading that opens out onto new critical territory all the way through." -Claudia L. Johnson, Marquette University
"Massé handles an important topic in a thorough, clear, and interesting fashion. I especially liked the book's combination of theoretical analysis and original readings of texts. In the Name of Love will make a significant contribution in all the areas it treats-feminism, psychoanalysis, and literature."-Shirley Nelson Garner, Department of English, University of Minnesota
The Gothic woman is taught to believe that self-abnegation will be rewarded by love; her experience clearly proves otherwise. Although Gothic fiction has characteristically been written by and for women, this sophisticated and venturesome book is one of the first to examine the contradictions of the Gothic pact in the light of contemporary feminist and psychoanalytic theory. Michelle A. Massé looks at selected British and American novels from the eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the theme of masochism as an element of women's identity. Approaching the Gothic novel by way of psychoanalysis, she also identifies a Gothic plot within psychoanalytic theory itself.
In fiction that ranges from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, and Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca to Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills, Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle, and Pauline Réage's Story of O, Massé explores the narrative of women being trained to embrace their own subordination. She begins by asserting that the stylistic and structural repetitions of the Gothic constitute both symptoms of this trauma and attempts to work it through. Massé delineates the pattern of women's ego formation in the courtship plot and discusses what she calls "marital Gothic." She then addresses the complicated issues raised by the classic beating fantasy in which the young girl must choose to accept the role of victim, aggressor, or spectator. In her conclusion, she con- siders modes of resistance to this triangular drama and to the related fantasy of romance.
In the Name of Love will be essential reading for scholars and students in the fields of gender studies, critical, psycho-analytic, and novel theory, as well as Victorian and contemporary fiction.
MICHELLE A. MASSÉ is Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. A graduate of Anna Maria College, she received her Ph.D. degree from Brown University.
Cover illustration: King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, by Edward Burne-Jones. Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York.
Good copy, light spine tanning/creasing, crease to front cover corner, light wear.
1973, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket + slipcase), 475 pages, 28 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Rembrandt Verlag / Berlin
$110.00 - In stock -
Exceptional 1973 hardcover, slipcased first edition volume dedicated the history of Fantastic Painting in all its mutations, compiled by Austrian art historian and critic, curator, literary scholar and writer, Wieland Schmied (1929 – 2014).
"The fantastic and connected with it the remote, the strange, the absurd, the unreal, the irrational and illusionary, the visionary, the hallucinatory and dreamlike belong to the constant undercurrents and countercurrents of all art. Such images remind us that the world is more diverse, richer and more unmistakeable than we sometimes want to admit, that the night pages with their secrets of the dark belong to it in essence like the day with its magic of light. The fantastic art articulates powers and instincts that have a very intense influence on our lives, on our consciousness. It always shakes the questionlessness of the world, it always frightens us: from the abysses within ourselves and from the mysteries of a world that we have not created.
Wieland Schmied, who, as director of the Kestner Society, highlighted the topicality of fantastic and surrealist thoughts in the work of numerous contemporary artists in much-discussed exhibitions, examines in this book the different definitions of the fantastic and tries to distinguish between similar and related phenomena - the poetic, the grotesque, the absurd, the literary - but also to distinguish the fantastic art from the historical currents of Mannerism, Romanticism, Symbolism and Surrealism, which contain all elements of the Fantastic."
At 475 pages, and profusely illustrated with over 200 plates in colour and b/w, featuring the art of Henry Fuseli, Odilon Redon, James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Blake, Francisco Goya, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, Rodolphe Bresdin, Félix Labisse, Meret Oppenheim, Horst Janssen, Edward Burra, Jindřich Štyrský, Victor Hugo, Gustave Moreau, Henri Rousseau, Roland Topor, Giorgio de Chirico, Jane Graverol, Unica Zürn, Max Ernst, Pierre Roy, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Salvador Dali, Victor Brauner, Hans Bellmer, Richard Oelze, Wifredo Lam, René Magritte, Ivan Albright, Man Ray, Fred Deux, Morris Graves, Joseph Cornell, Max Klinger, Gustave Doré, Max Walter Svanberg, Toyen, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, André Masson, Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Kurt Seligmann, Miodrag Đurić (Dado), Karel Teige, Paul Wunderlich, Roland Penrose, Josef Šíma, Paul Delvaux, Óscar Domínguez, Fernando Botero, Leonor Fini, Uwe Bremer, Bernard Schultze, František Janoušek, Josef Vyleťal, František Muzika, Domenico Gnoli, Wols, Heinz Trökes, Otto Tschumi, Jindřich Heisler, Václav Tikal, Gisela Breitling, Pit Morell, Graham Sutherland, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Erich Brauer, Anton Lehmden, Ursula, Konrad Klapheck, and so many more....
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket, perfectly preserved in Near Fine-Very Good original-issue publisher's box with some light discolouration.
1982/1992, Japanese
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
"Corpse" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, first published in 1982, then re-printed in 1992, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of death and the dead in the arts, literature, occultism, ancient sciences, philosophy, mythology, poetry, film, crime, and much more. Features John Duncan, Tetsumi Kudo, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Masahisa Fukase, Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Joe Potts (LAFMS), Takashi Ishii, Rudolf II — Holy Roman Emperor, Akinari Ueda, Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, Paul Celan, Alain Resnais, Gilyak Amagasaki, Shusaku Arakawa, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Shuji Terayama, Andy Warhol, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, Kyoko Endoh, Princess Yongtai, Salvador Dalí, Ono no Komachi, Kiyoshi Kasai, Caravaggio, Throbbing Gristle, Takizawa Bakin, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Manson Family, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wu Zetian, Genesis P-Orridge, Yusuke Nakahara, Ranpo Lagrange, Mitsusada Fukasaku, Nakai Hideo, Richard Wagner, and many more.
Very Good copy.
1971, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 18.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
E P Dutton / New York
$20.00 - Out of stock
Lovely first print 1971 copy of the Studio Vista/Dutton Pictureback book on Symbolists and Decadents by John Milner. A profusely illustrated study, almost a concise accompaniment to Philippe Jullian's study the same year.
"Thinkers, writers and artists in late-nineteenth-century Europe were impelled by their distrust of the growing materialism of their age towards a search for truths that were of personal and universal significance. The artist embarked on an interior journey and endeavoured to represent his experience of it in an art that would give body and form to emotions and dreams.
Originally a literary movement, Symbolism was born out of this inward search as writers and artists portrayed the longings and nightmares which epitomized the preoccupations of the fin de siècle death and frustration, union and conflict of the sexes, cruel or superfluous beauty, the fatal woman, the siren and the sphinx.
In this new introduction to these fascinating and highly individual artists John Milner traces the Symbolist and Decadent movements from the forerunners in the Pre-Raphaelite movement through the Synthetists (Gauguin and the Pont-Aven group), the Rose +Croix, the German and Austrian Secessions, the personal and fantastic vision of artists such as Odilon Redon and Arnold Böcklin.
Both Symbolist and Decadent painters were concerned with the expression of ideas, mood and emotions. The Decadents, however, in their reaction to a pragmatist and materialist age, withdrew into an exclusive dandyism, and embraced the twin rituals of Catholicism and diabolism; while the search for significance in the forms of Symbolist art was the shadow of a seeking for meaning and spiritual experience in a time of good sense and clear-cut ideas.
Artists of France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland and Britain are represented here with 115 compelling illustrations."
John Milner is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Very Good copy.
1989, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Creation Books / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
As New copy of this very rare collection of poetry by the master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated throughout with many lithographs by French Symbolist Odilon Redon. A beautiful edition from the beginning of the Creation Books catalogue.
"Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone." (1847)
"Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) considered himself foremost a poet. Even his best-remembered tales read as prose-poems; obsessive tracts on dream and trance, catalepsy, premature burial, fetishism, necrophilia: a canon of ossified manias whose morbidness is reflected in the substance of his verse compositions. These, epistles of a poisoned romance between body and soul, charting febrile dreamscapes, seem to reflect the writer's life of sexual torment through a drink and opium mirror; a symphony of dead brides and delirium.
It was this doomed spiral that Baudelaire later recognized in announcing his own credo of perpetual intoxication; his "Fleurs du Mal" were inspired directly by Poe, sickly blooms that in turn coil through the feverclaws of Rimbaud, or the foetid distortions of Lautreamont. Right through to the claustrophobic cosmogenies of H.P. Lovecraft and perhaps beyond, the spirit of Poe resonates throughout the history of insane literature.
The poems selected for this present volume chart Poe's idealistic disintegration; from youthful Byronic romanticism, as in the long, convoluted and naive narrative "Al Aaraaf" (1829) into his more familiar, hallucinant cartography of the necropolis - most starkly expressed in the spiritual nadir of "The Conqueror Worm" (1842). In "Ulalume", for example, the writer is compelled to
revisit the swamplands where he has entombed the corpse of his butchered bride on a previous Hallowe'en; in "The Raven" , he is haunted by that dread harbinger of menstruation with promises of a spectral visitation from a mistress beyond the grave. The much-anthologized "Annabel Lee" - included here, as are several poems, in a lesser-known early version - is an unveiled paean to necrophilia.
The above-mentioned pieces are just some of many oneiric shards from that lost and fragmented mosaic, the glittering yet entombed genius of the artist - dreamland glimpsed through the sarcophagus lid of the heavens."
"Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was compelled to reproduce the most insane images from his unconscious, inspired by such "dangerous" writers of his time as Poe, Baudelaire, and Flaubert. Acclaimed by the Symbolists, clearly anticipating Surrealism, his bizarre and macabre works were immortalized by description in Joris-Karl Huysmans' profane bible "A Rebours" ("Against Nature") of 1884 -itself one of the strangest books ever committed to print.
The lithographs reproduced herein are from Redon's series "A Edgar Poe" of 1882."
—James Havoc (introduction)
Fine—As New copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Creation Books / London
$45.00 - In stock -
Dead Brides contains the vampire cycle of live stories, written between 1835 and 1842, which in many ways forms the nucleaus of Poe's prose work: Berenic, Montella, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Oval Portrait. In these classic tales, Poe investigates the vampiric nature of human relationships, including love and lust both normal and incestuous, and develops his theme to observe the vampiric qualities inherent in the creative or artistic process.
Vampirism, with its terrible energy exchanges and lesions, is ultimately Poe's analogy for a love that persists beyond the grave - an all-consuming passion that knows no peace until an undead reconciliation is effected.
With a preface by Jeremy Reed, Dead Brides is illustrated by the lithographs of the Symbolist Odilon Redon, who was compelled to reproduce the most insane images from his unconcious through the inspiration of Baudelaire, Huysmans, and other dangerous writers of his age.
Near Fine copy.
1957, English
Softcover, 170 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Reprint,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
University of California / Berkeley
$15.00 - Out of stock
Reprint of the 1957 paperback edition of Poems by Mallarmé, published by the University of California, Berkeley.
The leading poet of French symbolism, Mallarmé has exercised an enormous influence both on French and on English and American avant-garde writers. In this volume C. F. MacIntyre has translated forty-three of his poems, including the "Ouverture" and "Scène" from Hérodiade, which was to have been a drama in verse, and the well-known L'Après-midi d'un Faune, for which Debussy composed his orchestral Prelude.
Indeed, as MacIntyre suggests, Debussy is probably "one of the best guides into the mysterious realm of Mallarmé." The poet was more concerned with the music of words, their sounds and vague associations, than with their conventional meanings; one of the elements in his credo was that suggestion and evocation are of greater significance than statement. His syntax is fractious, his meaning frequently enigmatic; and the reader will find MacIntyre's notes helpful in savoring the translations and the original French verses, which appear on facing pages.
MacIntyre began his translations from Mallarmé in 1939. Meanwhile he has published translations from three other important French poets: Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Tristan Corbière. He is well known for his Faust and his translations of Rainer Maria Rilke. His volumes of original poems include The Black Bull, Cafés and Ca-thedrals, and Poems.
Fine copy.
1981, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 500 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Avenel / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1981 hardcover edition of 'A Treasury of Fantasy', a 500 page collection of classic Fantasy tales through the ages, edited by Cary Wilkins at the height of the 1970s/1980s revival in the fantastic fiction genre, illustrated with 46 imaginative illustrations from such fine artists as Aubrey Beardsley, H. J. Ford, Arthur Hughes, Richard Doyle, Lancelot Speed, and others.
"Beyond time, beyond space, "beyond the fields we know" —fantasy reveals to us not only unexplored worlds but also the unexplored realms of our imagination. Spanning seven centuries, the stories and novels in this book will take you through enchanted forests, magnificent palaces, and dragon-haunted caves to rocky shores at the end of the world."
Includes:
The Elves – Johann Ludwig Tieck, The King of the Golden River – John Ruskin, Phantastes – George MacDonald, The Wood Beyond the World – William Morris, The King of Elfland's Daughter – Lord Dunsany, The Doom That Came to Sarnath – H. P. Lovecraft, Swords of the Purple Kingdom – Robert E. Howard, The Rule of Names – Ursula K. Le Guin
"Prepare yourself for mystical journeys through the unbounded worlds of fantasy.
Once you've been there and back, you may find your journeys are only beginning."
VG copy in VG DJ with some minor shipping to top edge of DJ, general light toning/foxing to edges of block.
1992, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 19.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Dedalus / Cambs
$30.00 - Out of stock
First 1992 Dadalus English translation of The Green Face, Meyrink's second novel, published in Germany in 1916 to critical and commercial acclaim. With cover art by Richard Oelze.
"Its setting is Amsterdam, which is used in the novel as a symbol of European decadence, and is ultimately destroyed. "The novel has the classic Meyrink features - the mystical wedding, the galaxy of grotesque characters and the haunting atmosphere of the ghetto. Mike Mitchell's superb translation of The Green Face will help establish Gustav Meyrink's reputation as one of this century's most important authors of fantastic fiction."—book jacket
"Meyrink's The Green Face is second in visionary power only to The Golem... By creating an all-pervading atmosphere of kafkaesque mystery and uncertainty, Meyrink succeeds in suggesting inexhaustible depths and heights of meaning."—Franz Rottensteiner
Good—VG copy with light wear/toning.
1979, Japanese
Softcover, 240 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fool's Mate / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Rare "Special Stock" compendium book by the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.
This special three issue collection combines Vol. 4 "Fantasy" + Vol. 6 "Eros" + Vol. 7 "Avant-Garde". Says it all really. Incredible in-depth, encyclopaedic features on Derek Bailey (full biography and discograohy), British avant-garde/free music/jazz/avant-rock/R.I.O./Canterbury (Bailey, Henry Cow, Daevid Allen/Gong, Lol Coxhill, Soft Machine, Company, Slapp Happy, Keith Tippett, National Health, Evan Parker, Art Bears, King Crimson, Hatfield and The North, Kew Rhone, National Health, Robert Wyatt, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Incus Records, Ogun Records, etc.), R.I.O. expanded (Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, ZNR, The Residents, Albert Marcoeur, Stormy Six, Etron Fou Leloublan, Samla Mammas Manna, etc.), plus features and articles on Robert Fripp, Atoll, Annette Peacock, Italian Prog, Gloria Mundi, Peter Hammill, Ashra, Brian Eno, Tony Banks, Van Der Graaf, Genesis, Vangelis, Peter Gabriel, New Spanish Rock, and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.
Very Good copy.
1985, German
Hardcover, 184 pages, 27.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kölnischer Kunstverein / Köln
$45.00 - In stock -
Lovely 1985 hardcover catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, March 23—June 2, 1985, curated by German art historian and curator Wulf Herzogenrath, featuring Josef Albers, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Carl Gustav Carus, Marcel Duchamp, Jannis Kounellis, René Magritte, Kasimir Malevich, La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela, Barnett Newman, Nam June Paik, Arnulf Rainer, Odilon Redon, Mark Rothko, Reiner Ruthenbeck, and Georges Seurat. Heavily illustrated in colour and b/w with accompanying texts in German.
Good copy with some rubbing/flaking to silkscreened carbon black hardcovers, otherwise Very Good throughout. Previous owner's name to title page (that of Melbourne artist Bernhard Sachs).
1960, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 18.5 x 12 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Paul Elek Limited / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
Lovely 1960 paperback edition of The Monk, a gothic classic by Matthew Gregory Lewis, first published in 1796. It tells the story of Ambrosio, a highly respected monk whose descent into depravity is triggered by lust and culminates in murder, rape, and other atrocities. The novel is known for its sensational and shocking content, including elements of the supernatural, and is considered a landmark work in the Gothic fiction genre.
"This is the book which took the reading public by storm when it was first published in 1796 and modern readers find it just as exciting today. One critic has called it 'A mass of murder, outrage, diablerie and indecency'. The monk, Ambrosio, of saintly reputation, is seduced by a young woman, Matilda, who has entered his monastery disguised as a boy and captured his interest. Once his vows are broken Ambrosio's fall is rapid. With the help of Matilda, who is in league with the Devil, he courts one of his penitents, but has to commit murder before his desires are satisfied. Then, in a panic, he kills his mistress to escape detection. But it is too late. The inquisition captures and tortures him. One last pact with the Devil seems to hold out hopes for his escape, but even Satan has deceived him."
Good copy with some sticker damage to cover and general tanning/age.
1972, German
Softcover, 96 pages, 28 x 205 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Heyne Verlag / Münich
$35.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful 1972 German book of erotic art selected by Phyllis and Dr. Eberhard Kronhausen, rightly considered international experts in the field. "Their exhibition "Erotic Art," which has been shown in many countries around the world, formed the basis for this illustrated volume. Because this exhibition included loans from museums and galleries, as well as works from the Kronhausen couple's collection and other private collections, it was possible to present images that had previously been inaccessible to the public. In selecting works for this volume, care was taken, on the one hand, to depict these unknown works, and, on the other, to provide a reliable overview of the erotic work of the leading artists (painting, graphic art, and sculpture) of our century. Thus, this book is a fortunate exception; it is a precious document, but also a demonstration of the sexual and cultural revolution of our century."
Features the work of Franz von Bayros, Hans Bellmer, Marc Chagall, Lovis Corinth, Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Otto Dix, J. Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Ernst Fuchs, Willi Geiger, George Grosz, Horst Janssen, Allen Jones, Gustav Klimt, Felix Labisse, Jan Lebenstein, Edward Munch, Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Picasso, Herbert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Max Walter Swanberg, Tomi Ungerer, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann.
Good—VG copy with some laminate seperation to cover extremities and slight corner bump.
1936, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 308 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Chatto & Windus / London
$180.00 - In stock -
Very rare first English edition of Some Poems of Mallarmé, published in 1936 by Chatto & Windus, London. This hardcover (blue cloth with gilt lettering) presents for the first time the excellent translations by Roger Fry, with commentaries by French translator and critic Charles Mauron and features the very uncommon dust jacket illustrated by English painter, interior designer, sister of Virginia Woolf and member of the Bloomsbury Group, Vanessa Bell, printed in Great Britain by T. & A. Constable Ltd. at the University Press, Edinburgh. Bilingual with original French and translated English on facing pages.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 – 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.
Average-Good copy (good binding w. light discolouring to edges from age), in the scarcely present Vanessa Bell dust jacket in poor condition (browning and brittled with age/chips/missing fragments).
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 250 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
Erotica April 1972, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica April 1972 features the artwork of Toshio Saeki, Kyozo Hayashi, Koaku Yukio, Kaname Ozuma, "Alone" by Japanese photographer Takumi Uchida, Meiji sexual history, erotica by poet and painter Mitsuharu Kaneko, European erotic cinema, and much more.
Very Good copy, light wear.