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copy in the professionally restored jacket (rear panel reattached, head of spine and tips reconstructed) lightly dust-soiled and slightly creased. first edition, presentation copy to vanessa bell, inscribed by the author on publication: “Vanessa Bell from V.W. Oct. 1922”. An exceptional association copy: Jacob’s Room was the first of Woolf’s books for which Vanessa Bell designed the dust jacket, and the text represents Woolf’s attempt to do in fictional form what her sister had been doing with her paintings for the past decade. Jacob’s Room does not carry a formal dedication, but given the collaboration between the sisters in its design and the identity of their artistic aims, this might be regarded as the de facto dedication copy. “Woolf’s family portrait-making in Jacob’s Room can be seen as a literary rendering of her sister’s experiment, in particular Studland Beach and her portraits of 1911–13 . . . In their reaction to the work of the Post-Impression- ist painters, both women artists depart from realist representation of people and places and seek to influence the audience’s emotions through formal means” (Kostkowska, pp. 79–83). Virginia Woolf noted in her diary for Saturday 14 October 1922: “I have seen Nessa, Maynard, Lydia, Desmond, Saxon, Lytton, Frankie Birrell & Marjorie Fry, all within this week; & had two letters, from Lytton & Carrington, about Jacob’s Room , & written I don’t know how many envelopes; & here we are on the verge of publication . . . Rich- mond writes to ask that date of publication may be put ahead, so that they may notice it on Thursday.” Jacob’s Room was published on Friday 27 October in an edition of 1,200 copies. The first full-length book to be published by the Hogarth Press, its publication marked the moment when the Woolfs decided to run the Press as a genuine business concern. Kirkpatrick A6a; Woolmer 26; Kostkowska, Justyna, “ Studland Beach and Jacob’s Room : Vanessa Bell’s and Virginia Woolf’s experiments in portrait making 1910– 1922”, Partial Answers 9:1, January 2011. £85,000 [87261]
copy, the cloth notably bright, preserving the rare dust jacket, price-clipped, with extremities creased and rubbed with some short tears to joints and chipping to spine ends. first uk edition, first impression, in the scarce dust jacket featuring a striking woodcut by john nash, which also appears as a frontispiece, depicting three men rescuing the body of a drowned woman from a river. It was first published in New York by Harper & Brothers earlier the same year, with a dust jack- et illustrated by British sculptor and engraver Leon Underwood, featuring a far less menacing scene than that chosen by Nash: in Underwood’s illustration, a mother and daughter launder clothes in the street using a washing dolly, with the boarded-up windows of houses visible in the background. Jipping Street is “a graphic and absorbing account of growing-up in a London slum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries . . . [it is] a psychic reconstruction of childhood rather than a chronological narrative” ( The Autobiography of the Working Class , p. 336). At the age of 12 Woodward (1896–1961) began working in a London factory, and just one year later she had left home to take up another factory job making collars for men’s shirts. Later she took positions as a re- ceptionist and a freelance journalist, and allied herself with various socialist, suffrage, and free-thought groups. The Autobiography of the Working Class, Vol. II: 1900–1945 , eds. John Burnett, David Vincent, & David Mayall, Harvester, 1984–89, 852. £250 [130552] 176 WOOLF, Virginia. Jacob’s Room. Richmond: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1922 Octavo. Originalyellow cloth, printed paper spine label. With the dust jack- et designed by Vanessa Bell. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Cloth soiled and darkened, label rubbed and chipped, short tear to lower joint at head, inner hinges cracked, an artist’s
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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