“The literary value, if I may say it, of this span of empty space on the page, which mentally separates groups of words or words themselves, is to periodically accelerate or slow the movement, the scansion, the sequence even, given one’s simultaneous view of the entirety of the page…” (Stéphane Mallarmé, “Observation Relative au Poème Un Coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard,” Cosmopolis, May 1897, p. 412 [trans.]) [Read more…] about Meticulous free verse: Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés and Ellsworth Kelly
Limited Editions Club
George Macy’s illustrated editions of Charles Dickens’s Christmas classic
Between July 1937 and March 1938, Nonesuch Press—under the direction of George Macy—set out to publish what it billed as the most extensive collection yet made of Charles Dickens’s writings. It had already been an energetic few years. Macy founded the subscription-based Limited Editions Club in 1929, and the Heritage Press in 1935, before acquiring London-based Nonesuch Press in 1936. Nonesuch’s practice of teaming up a small hand press for design and commercial printers for production allowed for a wider circulation of its fine-press quality books. [Read more…] about George Macy’s illustrated editions of Charles Dickens’s Christmas classic
African American artists and writers in the Limited Editions Club
The stories I selected span three decades and show (Zora Neal) Hurston’s diversity in writing styles and subject matter. I created my illustrations from fragments of fabric, paper and faded photos. The layering of images, patterns and textures evoke the feeling of memory and old tales retold. So they become, like the stories, “Bookmarks in the Pages of Life.”—Betye Saar, artist’s afterword to Bookmarks in the Pages of Life [Read more…] about African American artists and writers in the Limited Editions Club
Recent publications
Alison K. Frazier, Editor
The Saint between Manuscript and Print in Italy, 1400–1600
University of Toronto Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, July 2015
The 12 essays in this volume identify mutually interactive developments in media and saints’ cults at a time and in a place when both underwent profound change. Focusing on the Italian peninsula between 1400 and 1600, authors analyze specific sites of intense cultural production and innovation. The volume invites further study of saints of all sorts—canonized, popularly recognized, or self-proclaimed—in the fluid media environment of early modernity. [Read more…] about Recent publications
Fellows Find: Audio interviews with British actors and actresses reveal rare insight into George Bernard Shaw productions
Jennifer Buckley, an assistant professor of rhetoric at the University of Iowa, visited the Ransom Center to work in the George Bernard Shaw collection. Her research was funded by the Limited Editions Club Endowment, and she shares some of her findings below. The Ransom Center is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its fellowship program in 2014–2015.
I came to the Ransom Center expecting to read hundreds of pages of “Shaw talk”—the lengthy, loquacious, overtly rhetorical stage speech the Irish playwright wrote for actors and readers over the course of his six-decade theatrical career. [Read more…] about Fellows Find: Audio interviews with British actors and actresses reveal rare insight into George Bernard Shaw productions