An Alphabet of Animals

Carton Moore Park

This charming book is a facsimile of a children’s alphabet of animals first published in 1899. Commissioned by Glasgow and London publisher Blackie and Son, it contains a short description and a full-page grisaille drawing for each of the animals, with vignettes accompanying the letters of the alphabet. It was the first publication by Scottish artist Carton Moore Park, who specialized in animal subjects, and whose style was strongly influenced by the art of Japan. The quirky drawings, with their modern-looking cropping and close-up perspective, made the book stand out from all other alphabets of the day. When it was first published, critics acclaimed the artist’s strong handling and accurate anatomical knowledge, as well as his profound appreciation of the habits and movements of each animal depicted and his close sympathy with his subjects. One reviewer wrote that, ‘It is certainly the best book of the kind we have ever seen.’ A hundred and twenty years after it appeared, this exquisite rediscovered volume – very much of its moment but modern in spirit – will enchant and inform
a new generation of children.

Carton Moore Park (1877–1956) was a British painter, illustrator and teacher, born in Scotland. He studies at the Glasgow School of Art between 1893 and 1897. During the 1890s, he was best known for his illustrations of animals, which appeared in Glasgow Weekly Citizen and Saint Mungo. His illustrated books were Alphabet of Animals, Book of Birds, and A Book of Elfin Rhymes. He lived in London until 1910, when he emigrated to New York, where he spent the rest of his life.

Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals

Paul Gauguin
Preface by Emile Gauguin
Translated by Van Wyck Brooks

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Paul Gauguin is one of the giants of French post-Impressionism and a pioneer of early modernism. A rebel in both art and life, he rejected his bourgeois upbringing and comfortable stockbroker’s job to devote himself to painting. Eventually, dismayed by the ‘hypocrisy of civilization’ and in search of a primitive idyll, he left his wife and children behind in France and took up residence in the South Seas, first in Tahiti and, later, in the Marquesas Islands. In the final months of his life, he wrote this witty and revealing autobiographical memoir with the request that it be published upon his death. It first appeared in French in 1918, and was translated into English three years later. As his son Émile wrote in the preface, ‘These journals are an illuminating self-portrait of a unique personality.… They bring sharply into focus for me his goodness, his humor, his insurgent spirit, his clarity of vision, his inordinate hatred of hypocrisy and sham.’

Wide-ranging and elliptical, these candid reflections reveal Gauguin’s inner thoughts on many subjects, including frank views on his fellow artists in Paris, his turbulent relationship with Vincent van Gogh, and the charms of Polynesian women, with glimpses into his often far-from-idyllic existence in the Pacific islands. This facsimile reproduces the first translation of the journals, a rare limited edition privately published in New York in 1921 for a select group of subscribers. With his own full-page sketches, these entertaining and enlightening musings give us a unique insight into Paul Gauguin the man and the artist.

Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.

Emile Gauguin was Paul Gauguin’s eldest son. After working as a civil engineer in Colombia, he moved to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1955.

A Book of Elfin Rhymes

‘Norman’
with drawings by Carton Moore Park

This charming children’s book, written by an anonymous author known only as ‘Norman’ and first published in 1900, features eleven rhymes that capture the mysterious and sometimes ridiculous world of goblins, witches and fairies. Children and parents alike will delight at these stories of naughty imps and elves who love to play pranks, tease and make mischief on humans, animals and one another. And while few of these fairy tales have a happy ending, all of them offer the reader a moral lesson of sorts. Each verse is accompanied by several drawings by illustrator Carton Moore Park in either one, two or three simple colours in a style that not only conveys the magic of the fairy-realm, but also is strikingly modern in character. This facsimile edition is beautifully printed on high-quality paper to create a collectible object that recipients young and old will treasure long into adulthood. It is the latest volume in a series of special facsimiles of historic illustrated children’s titles selected and produced by Art / Books.

Little Women

Louisa M. Alcott
Abridged by W. Dingwall Fordyce
Illustrations by Norman Little

Louisa May Alcott’s beloved children’s novel Little Women is one of the classics of American literature. The novel follows the lives of the March sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy and details their passage from childhood to womanhood during the years of the American Civil War. The story was loosely based on Alcott and her sisters’ own experiences of growing up in Concord, Massachusetts. The book became an immediate roaring success when it was published on 30 September 1868. The first two thousand copies sold out at once and it has never been out of print since. This 150th-anniversary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces an abridged version of the book published in 1910. It presents the story in an easy-to-read format, accompanied by delightful colour drawings illustrating key moments in the story by the Australian artist Norman Little. Beautifully produced as a quarter-bound hardback printed on high-quality paper, it is a perfect gift for readers of all ages.

Louisa May Alcott (1832–88) was an American novelist and poet, best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys(1886).

W. Dingwall Fordyce was the author of the adventure novels for children Our Secret Society, The Gun-Runners, In Search of Gold and The Jewelled Lizard, among other books. He also wrote abridged versions of classic novels, including Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales and Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women.

Norman Little (1883–1917) was an Australian artist and illustrator. He illustrated several books, including The Gateway to Tennyson and Faust and Marguerite, and produced many drawings, watercolours, and oil paintings of rural and military life. One of his paintings is held by the National Army Museum. He served with the Royal Fusiliers 11th Batallion as a lieutenant, and was killed in action in 1917.

The Art of Rodin

Introduction by Louis Weinberg

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Auguste Rodin is a colossus in the history of art. In a career that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Paris-born sculptor rebelled against the idealized forms and practices of traditional art and paved the way for the birth of modern sculpture. While he believed that art should be true to nature, he sought to penetrate beneath the surface appearance and to express inner truths of the human psyche. The hallmarks of his style – its highly eroticized, sometimes explicit character, his use of incomplete figures, his emphasis on formal qualities rather than on narrative, and his desire to retain the marks of the sculptural process – were considered revolutionary at the time. As a result, his intense, evocative works courted controversy, inspiring violent hatred and ardent admiration in equal measure. By the end of his life, however, his reputation was established and he had become one of the most celebrated artists in the world.

This centenary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the pages of a 1918 volume published immediately in the wake of Rodin’s death. With an essay by American artist, critic, and teacher Louis Weinberg, it presents almost seventy of Rodin’s greatest works in a beautiful clothbound format for a contemporary audience. It is a perfect gift, collectible and keepsake for any Rodin enthusiast or lover of modern sculpture.

Louis Weinberg (1885–1964) was an artist, writer and professor emeritus of art at City College in New York. He was the author of The Art of Rodin, Color in Every Day Life, America in the Making, and America in the Machine Age.

ABC

An Alphabet

Written and pictured by Mrs Arthur Gaskin

An Art / Books Children’s Classic

This classic Victorian children’s ABC primer was originally published in London and Chicago in 1895. It was the first book by the Arts and Crafts artist and designer Georgie Gaskin, celebrated for the jewellery she produced with her husband Arthur. Exquisite woodcut illustrations and rhymes by Gaskin accompany each letter of the alphabet and combine to create a volume that charms and delights both children and adults. It soon became a favourite and was published in several editions from the late 1890s, including a hand-painted deluxe version printed on vellum of only a handful of copies. This new facsimile is the first to reproduce the original clothbound trade edition of 1895. It is bound with a silkscreened cloth cover and printed on high-quality paper to create a collectible object that recipients will treasure long into adulthood. It is the first volume in a series of special facsimiles of historic illustrated children’s titles selected and produced by Art / Books.

Georgina Evelyn Cave Gaskin (1866–1934), known as Georgie Gaskin, was an English jewellery and metalwork designer. With her husband Arthur Gaskin, she was one of the original members of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen, and a leading jeweller of the Arts and Crafts movement. They produced silver and enamel work, book illustrations and jewellery, both independently and in partnership. Georgie wrote and illustrated a number of books under her own name and as Mrs Arthur Gaskin, beginning with ABC: An Alphabet in 1895, a year after the couple married. She continued to design jewellery until shortly before her death.

The Art of Aubrey Beardsley

Preface and introduction by Arthur Symons

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Aubrey Beardsley was a leading figure of the fin de siècle Aesthetic Movement and the most controversial artist in 1890s London. His delicate yet bold drawings of grotesque, sensual and erotic subjects transformed the art of illustration but also scandalized Victorian society with their dark and often perverse imagery. Prolific until his early death at the age of twenty-five from tuberculosis, in just six years and with almost no formal training he produced an enormous body of work that symbolized the decadence of the period.

Published twenty years after he died, The Art of Aubrey Beardsley presented sixty-four of his works in an intimate pocket-sized edition. With a personal memoir and critical appreciation by the poet and editor Arthur Symons, written upon the death of his friend and collaborator, it was the definitive word on the provocative artist’s seductive and individual art, the text becoming a collectors’ item that was privately printed until being published for a wider audience. This centenary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the pages of the 1918 volume, presented in a special cloth binding with a black-and-gold motif adapted from one of Beardsley’s own designs for a book cover. A perfect gift for any Beardsley enthusiast, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in the fin de siècle era and the beginnings of modern graphic art.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872–98) was born in Brighton on 21 August 1872. By the age of seven, he was showing signs of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. From 1891 to 1892, he took evening classes at the Westminster School of Art, the only formal artistic training he ever received. That year, he visited Paris and discovered the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Japanese prints, both of which influenced his own style. In 1893, he received his first commission, to illustrate Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Over the next six years, he completed numerous projects, including illustrations for editions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and drawings for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. He also co-founded the literary magazines the Yellow Book and the Savoy. By 1897, his health was deteriorating, prompting a move to Menton on the French Riviera, where he died on 16 March 1898.

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was a British poet, critic and magazine editor and one of the key exponents of Symbolism in Britain. He contributed poems and essays to the illustrated quarterly literary periodical the Yellow Book, whose principal illustrator and first art editor was Aubrey Beardsley. From late 1895 through 1896 Symons edited, along with Beardsley and Leonard Smithers, The Savoy, a short-lived magazine of literature, art, and criticism whose contributors included Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad. Until he suffered a breakdown in 1909, Symons wrote numerous volumes of verse, plays, and essays, including the important The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which would have a major influence on W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.