MR. KNIFE MISS FORK - JOHN J. SLOCUM'S COPY
Paris: The Black Sun Press, 1931. First Edition. Item #7216
Regular Issue, one of 200 copies. Octavo (18.5cm); original black cloth, with decorations and double-ruled border stamped in gilt on spine and front cover, and in blind to rear cover; black endpapers; [iv],38,[8]pp, with frontispiece and 18 gelatin silver prints (photograms) after frottages, each covered with a tissue guard with text printed in red. John J. Slocum's copy, with a lengthy and extraordinary chain of ownership written in three different hands on the preliminary blank (with the concluding remarks in Slocum's hand): "Stolen by Henry Miller from Caresse Crosby / Given by Henry Miller to John J. Slocum / Given by John J. Slocum to Emily Sweetser / Given by Emily Sweetser to Sherman Conrad / Traded by Sherman Conrad to Nancy Starrels Herz / Purchased by John J. Slocum from a piratical bookseller, December 1955 (sixteen years later)." Spine ends worn, some very light surface rubbing to cloth, spine gilt lightly rubbed and dulled, with some flaking to cloth at corners and lower board edges; contents fresh, with hinges sound; Very Good.
A collaborative work between these two prominent Surrealists, in which Ernst produced 19 illustrations for the first chapter of Crevel's 1927 novel Babylone, translated into English by Kay Boyle and published by Caresse Crosby's Black Sun Press. "The white-on-black images do a fine job of representing the dark visions of death and desire that come to the young girl in Crevel's story: "What is death? What is a whore? Death is something like Cousin Cynthia." Ernst chose quotations from the book to appear as titles under the prints. He also collaborated with the book's binder, A.J. Gonon, to produce the black binding with gold tooling that is reminiscent of the bindings on old nineteenth-century sentimental fictions" (Roth 101, p.66).
Slocum (1914-1997) was an American diplomat, literary agent, and bibliophile, whose collection of James Joyce material supplied the basis for the now standard bibliography (by Slocum and Herbert Cahoon), and whose contributions to scholarship on Joyce are inestimable. A copy with distinguished provenance, having passed variously from its publisher to the hands of Henry Miller, two poets, and a prominent bibliophile while cycling through the rare book trade over the last seven decades. Minkoff A41.
Price: $12,500.00