Title: PRIVATE PRESS & ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
Date: February 23, 2012
Time: at 1:30 PM
Exhibition: Fri., Feb. 17, 10-6
Tues., Feb. 21, 10-6
Wed., Feb. 22, 10-6
Thurs., Feb. 23, 10-noon

Contact Person: Christine von der Linn
cvonderlinn@swanngalleries.com

Features works from the libraries of two American book collectors. The first collection, amassed by Norman J. Sondheim, contains examples from the major fine English and American presses such as Ashendene, Cresset, Golden Cockerel, Gregynog, Kelmscott, Nonesuch and Shakespeare Head.The second collection showcases contemporary and modern press books from The Limited Editions Club, Janus, Arion, and Allen Presses, among others. Handsome livres d'artiste and fine illustrated books from other collections round out the sale.
Highlights Include:
From the Arion Press, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, San Francisco, 1979, pictured top left.
Kelmscott Press's The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer now newly imprinted, possibly the most famous book of the modern private press movement, and one of 425 copies of the first edition, Hammersmith, 1896.
Ben Jonson's Songs by Ben Jonson: A Selection from the Plays, Masques, and Poems, with the Earliest Known Settings of Certain Numbers, London, 1906.
Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, printed by Cranach Press, Weimar, 1930.
Victor Hammer's striking Samson Agonistes, by John Milton, Florence, 1931, pictured bottom left.