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146 STEIN, Gertrude. An Acquaintance with Description. London: The Seizin Press, 1929 Octavo. Original plain buckram. Title page vignette by Len Lye. Spine lightly browned, faint soiling to cloth, a couple of marginal marks to contents; else a near-fine copy. first edition, one of two known proof copies, inscribed by robert graves to his sister on the front free endpaper: “Louise with love from Robert (printer & publisher)”. Graves founded the Seizen Press with his literary partner Laura Riding in 1927, and this is the second work published by the press (the first being Riding’s Love is Love, Death is Death in 1928). This is one of two proof copies printed in April 1929 on wood pulp paper instead of the heavy rag paper used for the signed limited trade edition of 225 copies. One other such copy, also without a limitation label, is known. The present work is part of Stein’s explanatory series about writ- ing that began with An Elucidation in 1923. Stein wrote this study of description after her return to France in the summer of 1926 from a lecture tour in Cambridge and Oxford. “The piece is an attempt to make a landscape her own . . . Stein considers how we appre- hend what we see and how we compose our perceptions in words” (Dydo, p. 504). “Since the experience of England had contributed to the study of description, Stein must have been delighted to see it published by Laura Riding and Robert Graves, with whom she had become friends” (ibid.). Dydo, Ulla E., A Stein Reader , Northwestern University Press, 1993; Wilson A13. £5,000 [93584] 147 STEIN, Gertrude. What Are Masterpieces. Los Angeles: The Conference Press, 1940 Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine red, boards ruled in red. With the dust jacket. Portrait frontispiece. Boards a little faded and lightly spotted, internally fine. An excellent copy in the faded jacket with some nicks and chips to extremities and tape repair to verso of head of spine.
first edition, signed limited issue, number 49 of 50 copies signed by the author. The volume collects three of Stein’s lectures at Oxford and Cambridge on the nature of artistic creation: “Compo- sition as Explanation” (1926), “What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?” (1935), and “An American and France” (1936). £1,500 [100043] 148 (STEWART, Dorothy Newkirk.) SHAKESPEARE, William. A Midsommer Night’s Dream. Sante Fe: Pictograph Press, 1953 Folio. Original paper boards lined at head and foot with blue cloth, titles and woodcut illustrations in purple, green, and yellow pasted to boards, woodcut illustrated endpapers in green, orange, pink, blue, and purple, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Title page printed in purple within elaborate stage frame design in purple and green. Text printed in purple, green, red, pink, blue, and grey. Illustrated with numerous woodcuts throughout. Slight rubbing to extremities, faint soiling to boards; a very good copy indeed. first and sole edition, signed limited issue, number 17 of 117 copies signed by the printer in pink ink. Stewart (1891–1955) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, before joining the Santa Fe Art Colony in 1925, and working with the WPA Art- ist Collective in the 1930s. She and her sister, Margretta Dietrich (a suffragette and indigenous rights advocate), ran an open gallery and studio in Santa Fe, at which they hosted musicians, activists, and staged numerous dramatic works. In 1948 Stewart acquired a second-hand printing press, on which she produced a number of richly illustrated works, including two promoting Native American culture ( Indian ceremonial dances in the Southwest in 1950 and Handbook of Indian Dances in 1952) and two abridged acting editions of Shake- speare, Hamlet in 1949 and the present work. These works required hundreds of individually cut blocks, allowing the illustrations to be positioned beside and behind the dialogue in an innovative form. This work is notably uncommon, with just seven copies traced on OCLC, all of which are held in the Americas, and a single copy traced at auction. £3,750 [131621]
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