Beautiful Books in Limited Editions
The books they published were "beautifully bound, hand set books." One of their most beautiful books was the was the Hindu Love Manual which they first found while on holiday in Damascus. They reprinted it in October 1928, printing only 20 copies. Bound in navy blue leather, the cover was stamped with gold to reflect the style of ancient Persian manuscripts. The inside pages were printed on handmade paper colored a distinctive shade of gray and decorated with a gold border. Each illustration in every copy was hand-colored.
Their books were generally published in small numbers, usually less than 500 copies, sometimes as few as 10 or 20. They were "marked by clean lines, sharp typeface, and fine inks and papers." Some editions were published first as a "limited" edition, usually numbered and autographed, showcased with detailed design and costly materials, followed by a less expensive "trade" edition. Most were issued in slipcases. They published Les Liaisons Dangereuses with illustrations by Alastair. The cover was red-purple cloth with gilt lettering; it contained 14 engravings on color plates, with tissue guards, and numerous in-text illustrations.
In 1929, they published Harry Crosby's volume of verse, Mad Queen, which showed the influence of Surrealism and which included withering attacks on Bostonian tradition. Apart from his obsession with the sun, his writing increasingly contained references to dissolution and suicide. He viewed death as violent, quick, and liberating.
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Famous quotes containing the words beautiful, books, limited and/or editions:
“We can’t always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“All ... forms of consensus about “great” books and “perennial” problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of “what is already known.” Those great books don’t only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)