Beckett & Caxton: Million-Dollar Men
Caxton small.jpgTwo major auction sales provided a bit of serendipity yesterday, dovetailing with our current issue. Firstly, the summer issue revamps our million-dollar auctions feature, in which we recount the 13 books and manuscripts that made $1 million or more at auction in the past year. Today, another volume joined their esteemed company. The first book printed in the English language, The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, from the press of William Caxton c. 1473-74, sold for £1,082,500 ($1,823,363). Only 18 copies of this book survive, and of those, only six are in private hands. Adding to this particular copy's intriguing history are the former owners' annotations, recipes, and drawings of animals doodled in the margins.

Secondly, at the same sale, a collection of 347 letters and postcards, most signed by "Sam" Beckett, reached £146,500 ($246,765). Beckett--our summer issue's cover guy--found a place on our million-dollar list too, with his "Murphy" manuscript, which sold at Sotheby's last year for $1.4 million. These mostly unpublished letters, covering nearly 400 pages with 215 autograph envelopes, were written between 1947 and 1985 to Beckett's friends, Henri and Josette Hayden. Yesterday's top bid is considerably less than that paid when the packet of letters last changed hands in 2006.

Image: The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye. Courtesy of Sotheby's.
beckett letters, million-dollar auctions, rare books, samuel beckett, sotheby's auction, wiliam caxton
David Mitchell Publishes Twitter Story
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Yesterday the novelist David Mitchell, author of "The Cloud Atlas," began publishing a new 6,000 word short story via Twitter entitled "The Right Sort." (@david_mitchell)  The story, set in 1978, will grow by about 20 tweets each day with postings in the morning and afternoon.  Each segment is limited by Twitter's parameters to 140 characters in length, a limitation that Mitchell described as a "diabolical treble-strapped textual straitjacket."  The story, which will comprise 280 tweets, is about a boy tripping on his mother's Valium pills.

The experience of writing the story for Twitter inspired some interesting commentary on the medium by Mitchell, who said to The Guardian that the structure of the tweets alters how the text is read. 

"Reading off a page is like looking down at a landscape from a balloon - your eye 'sees' the story as well as reads it, its layout, its paragraphs and structure, and 'remembers' what it just read because it's still there, on the page, simultaneously. If you want to, you can reread any line instantly; or linger; or speed up; or optically 'flinch'. Reading a series of tweets is more like looking through a narrow window from a train speeding through a landscape full of tunnels and bands of light and dark. Each tweet erases its predecessor."

"The Right Sort" will tie-in to the novelist's upcoming novel "The Bone Clocks," which will be published in September.  If you don't have a Twitter account, you can keep up with the action at The Guardian's dedicated page for the story, where the tweets are assembling in sequential order.

Mitchell collectors, meanwhile, will have an interesting dilemma in front of them.  What's the best way to include a Twitter story in your Mitchell collection?

[Image from Wikipedia]


Rare Sendak Watercolor at Auction
A rare painting by children's author/illustrator Maurice Sendak goes to auction this week at Hake's Americana & Collectibles of York, Pennsylvania. Sendak created the 26" x 32" watercolor (seen below) in 1985 for a television adaptation of the Prokofiev opera, "The Love For Three Oranges." The piece has since been in the collection of Hake's founder Ted Hake, a friend of Sendak's who acquired the painting directly from the artist.  

sendak-2.jpgAccording to Hake's, only three other finished watercolors are known, and only one of those in private hands, which sold at auction in March 2009 for $74,000. After having a heart attack in his late thirties, Sendak ensured his legacy by making arrangements to donate all of his future original art to the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. So very few pieces of Sendak's art appear on the market.

The bidding is open--starting at $25,000--and will close on July 17.

Image: Maurice Sendak (American, 1928-2012), original watercolor art created for 1982 TV adaptation of Prokofiev's opera 'The Love For Three Oranges,' 26in x 31in (framed). Provenance: Ted Hake collection. Image courtesy of Hake's.
auction, hake's americana, maurice sendak, sendak art, ted hake
3 Favorites from Eric Carle
Yesterday I took a little "field trip" to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass. Two school-aged children and I wandered the exhibits, perused the library, and worked in the hands-on art studio, and it was delightful. There are three current exhibits this summer. Below are my favorites from each:

The typescript "manuscript" of Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, seen in Harriet the Spy Turns Fifty (on view through Nov. 30). Held in the museum's central gallery, the Carle organized this exhibit of Fitzhugh's pen and ink illustrations, and it premiered at NYC's Forbes Galleries earlier this year. 
The pigeon-caterpillar drawn in watercolor and crayon by Mo Willems, seen in The Art of Eric Carle & Friends: What's Your Favorite Animal? (on view through Aug. 31). This exhibit is the result of book project, published by Henry Holt & Co., in which Carle partnered with 14 leading illustrators to celebrate his museum's tenth anniversary in 2012.
The "dummy" books of Simms Taback, seen in Simms Taback: Art by Design (on view through Oct. 26). Celebrating the newly acquired Taback archive, the Carle just opened this exhibit, which surveys Taback's eight major books. In several instances, he crafted little example books, which really show the artist's process. (The 6-year-old budding artist really liked those.)
The thing about the Carle Museum is: whether you are 6, 9, or, ahem, much older, something--maybe everything--will appeal to you. 
children's illustration, eric carle, eric carle museum, exhibit, harriet the spy, illustration art, louise fitzhugh, mo willems, picture book art, simms taback
"A Farewell to Arms" Destined for the British Stage
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In a surprising move, the estate of Ernest Hemingway has granted unprecedented permission to adapt A Farewell to Arms for the stage. An English theatre company called "Imitating the Dog" successfully petitioned the estate for the rights. The play will make its debut at the Dukes Theatre in Lancaster in October, before embarking on tours of England and Italy.

Andrew Quick, director of the company, said his initial appeal was rejected by the Hemingway estate, but they eventually warmed to his proposal. The adaptation will be the first time the book has ever been staged in United Kingdom and the first time it has been performed anywhere in the world since a short-lived - and poorly received - Broadway run in 1930.

"Imitating the Dog will approach Hemingway's narrative through the company's unique visual style using projection techniques to create a magical and highly accessible version of the novel for all audiences," said Quick in an interview with the BBC.

Hemingway's classic semi-autobiographical novel of WWI has seen a resurgence in interest this year, the centenary of the war's start.
London's BookBench Sculptures
London sprouted fifty delightful book-shaped benches last week. The 'Books about Town' installation--reminiscent of the Cow Parade art project--was launched on July 2 by the National Literacy Trust and Wild in Art to celebrate literature with a splash of color, and, indeed, a place to sit and read. Local artists created benches based on a range of titles, from Bridget Jones's Diary to Great Expectations to Peter Pan, all stories with a link to London.

mrs_dalloway.pngIt's impossible to pick a favorite, but this Mrs. Dalloway bench, inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel and designed by Fiona and Neil Osborne of One Red Shoe, is certainly among them. It is, of course, located on the Bloomsbury Trail, one of four literary trails where benches are geographically clustered. While on the Bloomsbury, you can also visit the 1984 bench or the The Importance of Being Earnest bench. Other trails include the City Trail, the Greenwich Trail, and the Riverside Trail.

Here's the best part -- after the summer installation is over, all fifty sculptures will be sold at a public auction on October 7. Proceeds will be donated to the National Literacy Trust, an organization dedicated to promoting childhood literacy in the UK.

Image via Books about Town. 
BookBench, Fiona and Neil Osborne, National Literacy Trust, Wild in Art, book sculpture, literary tourism, public art
Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights Will Be Displayed For the First Time Ever... in Britain
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The British Library will exhibit the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as part of an exhibition about the Magna Carta in 2015. The Declaration of Independence will be on loan from New York Public Library, while the Bill of Rights is being offered by the US National Archives. Neither document has previously been in the UK. The groundbreaking exhibition will be held in honor of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the English legal document that subjected the king to the rules of law, and in turn inspired the American revolutionaries who drafted the Declaration and the Bill of Rights.

"It is extremely exciting," said British Library spokesperson Claire Breay. "They are the biggest loans that the library has ever had, and fitting for the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta."

New York Public Library's copy of the Declaration of Independence is a full-text version hand-written by Thomas Jefferson, incorporating changes suggested by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.  The Bill of Rights is one of 14 copies distributed to the 13 colonies and Congress in 1789. The copy owned by the US National Archives was originally intended for Delaware.

The exhibition will include the British Library's two copies of the Magna Carta as well several other significant items on international loan.

"The bedrock of our modern day society is rooted in the historic documents of the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights - the result of brave citizens who understood the importance of change and reform," said Tony Marx, president of the New York Public Library in an interview with The Guardian.

[Image from Wikipedia]



Ludwig Bemelmans, A Consummate New Yorker
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Madeline at the Paris Flower Market, 1955
Oil on canvas
The Estate of Ludwig Bemelmans
TM and © Ludwig Bemelmans, LLC.

 

Ludwig Bemelmans is perhaps best known for creating the plucky Parisian schoolgirl Madeline, and while the Caldecott and Newbery winner devoted himself to children's books, his eclectic résumé also included soldier, novelist, hotelier, restaurateur, set designer and itinerant interior decorator. The New-York Historical Society opens an exhibition today celebrating Bemelmans and his work.

 

Bemelmans' life was a uniquely American story. When the First World War broke out, Bemelmans - then a young hotel worker recently emigrated from Austria - enlisted in the Army as a medical attendant.  In 1937, he published his memoirs called My War With the United States. (Viking Press) While he never saw combat - Bemelmans was stationed at Fort Ontario and Fort Porter in New York - the book examines how soldiers suffering psychiatric issues were treated during the war. He also describes how he lived in American barracks while speaking German better than English, reading German books, and even keeping his German Shepard on base. Bemelmans' unmistakable style graces the cover with a pen and ink drawing of a cannon stationed in front of a fort. Taphophiles can find Bemelmans' tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery where he was buried 1962 in section 43, grave 2618.

 

After the war, Bemelmans wrote and illustrated for magazines like Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Town and Country and the New Yorker.  He also painted murals on the interiors of restaurants and bars. (The bar at the Carlyle Hotel was renamed Bemelmans Bar after he covered the walls with his whimsical interpretation of Central Park and its habitués.) He also designed sets and costumes for Broadway productions. The artist's own home reflected his desire to illustrate on any blank surface; - a map of Paris was plastered on the ceiling of his Gramercy Park bedroom, and painted donkeys wearing real straw hats adorned the dining room walls.

 

Out of all his vocations, Bemelmans most enjoyed creating children's books and felt that young readers deserved stories that respected their curiosity and sense of wonder.  He once said, "We are writing for children, but not for idiots."

 

The Historical Society's exhibit includes over ninety original artworks from all six Madeline books; drawings of the old Ritz hotel where Bemelmans first worked in New York; murals from a Parisian bistro and panels from the Onassis yacht "The Christina O," where the artist decorated the playroom walls with scenes from his beloved schoolgirl series.

 

The exhibit runs through October 13th.  The New-York Historical Society
is located at 170 Central Park West at 77th Street. Admission, hours of operation and more can be found at http://www.nyhistory.org/  



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Self portrait
Pen, black ink, and gray wash
The Estate of Ludwig Bemelmans
TM and © Ludwig Bemelmans, LLC.

ludwig bemelmans, madeline, new york historical society
David M. Rubenstein Funds Declaration of Independence Facsimile for American Embassies
stone-cover.pngJust in time for Independence Day (actually, July 2, 1776 is the day Congress voted to declare independence, but the delegates continued to debate Jefferson's text for two days), there arrived in my mailbox a beautifully illustrated booklet titled America's National Treasure: The Declaration of Independence & William J. Stone's Official Facsimile, produced by historic documents dealer Seth Kaller to accompany a new facsimile of the 1823 Stone engraving of the Declaration. The facsimile edition, funded by David M. Rubenstein in association with the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, allows for one framed copy of the document to be displayed in each of the U.S.'s embassies. Rubenstein, known for his patriotism, his philanthropy, and his collecting, purchased the Bay Psalm Book at auction last year for $14.2 million.

In the booklet's preface, Rubenstein writes, "Because the Declaration of Independence has--like the Stars and Stripes--become a symbol of the United States, and because the Stone copy of the Declaration is the most recognizable version of that historic document, I thought it would be appropriate to have a new copy of a Stone Declaration placed in each of the American embassies around the world. My hope was that everyone who visited an American embassy would see not just our flags, but also this unique symbol of our country."

The 24-page booklet also contains an introduction by Glenn M. Grasso and an afterword by Richard Brookhiser. Kaller's history of the document itself is superb reading--from John Dunlap setting the type on the first broadside to the official signing on August 2, 1776 to the engravings that followed, most notably William J. Stone's. Stone began his work in 1820, taking three years to expertly copy the original engrossed manuscript and print 201 copies on vellum. Most fascinating is the section on Stone's technique in making such an exact engraving--some have claimed that he used a wet or chemical process to take an image, which damaged the original. Instead, Kaller suggests here (with detailed images) that Stone traced the engrossed manuscript by hand and even left little clues to distinguish his from the original manuscript. The original Declaration, now nearly illegible, hangs in the National Archives building. Stone's edition is our only lasting vision of it.

America's National Treasure is available for browsing online. Kaller also hosts an online census of known copies of the first edition Stone imprints.

david m. rubenstein, declaration of independence, engraving, foundation for art and preservation in embassies, historic documents, seth kaller, william j. stone
Orwell's Birthplace in India Will Become a Museum
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The nearly ruined colonial bungalow where George Orwell was born in the small Bihar frontier town of Motihari will be restored and converted into a museum. The property consists of the three-room bungalow in addition to several tiny cottages and a warehouse for storing opium.  Orwell's father, Richard Blair, was employed by the British colonial government as an opium collector. While the buildings are dilapidated, conservationists have already begun work on their restoration.

Orwell - born Eric Blair on June 23, 1903 in India - left with his mother for Oxfordshire in 1904, never to return to his birthplace. 

No other museum exists to celebrate the life and work of the popular and influential author. 

"I am delighted that my father's old house is now under restoration and will be turned into a museum, a museum which will be the only one in the world," said Richard Blair, Orwell's son, in an interview with The Guardian. "For many decades the house was allowed to decay, so it's only to be applauded that the Bihar government now sees fit to put money into the project."

University College London, home of the George Orwell Archive, will raise the issue of supporting the museum through loaning items or the creation of replica material at its next archive committee meeting.

[Image from Wikipedia]