Brown, Bob

1450-1950

New York, NY: Jargon/Corinth, 1959. First Edition Thus. Softcover. “One-hundred-fifty copies of the first and only edition of 1450-1950 came forth from the Black Sun Press, Paris, in August of 1929, when the present editor was five months old. That it should take him thirty years to locate a copy of Bob Brown’s [1886-1959] utterly charming and singular book is a measure of the almost cultish regard 1450-1950 has commanded from its contemporaries. If you didn’t own a copy you were automatically cast into either of the modern outer darknesses then beginning to pullulate: Squaresville or Beat City. The virtues of 1450-1950 are publicly attested by many luminaries on the back cover blurb—among them, Gelett Burgess, who invented the word blurb. About 1450-1950, Bob Brown says: ‘I try to express myself in optical poems, as Apollinaire and cummings try, as I tried in Eyes on the Half Shell back in 1917, excited by the first Armory Show and Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, excited to combine drawings and words. I don’t think words alone are worth a damn anymore, except when handled by artists (cummings and Boyle for instance). […] I think we need to recapture something of the healthy hieroglyphic, now that oratory is dead and what poetry that’s still read aloud is bawled at us by electronicsniks [sic].’ For this new edition Bob Brown has made a few additions for good measure. The cover photograph of Bob Brown looking like Bob Jones was taken on his seventy-second birthday by Jonathan Williams” (Qtn. from untitled Publisher’s Note on front cover verso at interior). A late high-modernist obscurity from one Bob Brown, who Your Devoted VP-of-Operations at Third Mind Books — despite his long-standing love [& bibliographic engagement] with Modernism, had never heard of prior to curating this volume. That’s with good reason, however: for the fact of this work’s initial publishing by the legendarily Gonzo Harry & Caresse Crosby’s Black Sun Press in 1929 (which this writer, of course, did know about) makes this work an obscurity within an obscurity: a dust-caked matryoshka doll of literary Modernism, whose staying power quite obviously remains. From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed mate in the UK who managed the fabled Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England with Bill Butler (1934-1977, the famed American-expatriate bookseller & publisher). From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published many outstanding productions by WSB, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see an example with our item no. 8217). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler died in short order. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is also now closed, & he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed "The Last Hurrah," all the remaining treasures of Unicorn & Public House, some of which have become the stuff of myth. Trade-format softcover: first edition thus, printed in 1959 by Jargon/Corinth thirty years after its initial appearance (on Harry & Caresse Crosby’s famed Black Sun Press imprint). In Fair-Good condition with mild-to-enunciated shelf-wear to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge; a few scattered, low-visibility nicks/scuffs & some light-to-moderate rubbing to front, back covers at select locales & light-to-moderate age-toning throughout; other than this there is some contained, non- mold-stained water damage to the topmost & bottommost fine-edges of the volume, & the text blocks near/adjacent to both; luckily, however, this artifact does not extend beyond the work’s front cover & FFEP; preventing what might’ve been quite the hindrance with respect to this volume’s desirability (as a collectible), & arriving at a place in which this much-cherished rarity re-establishes itself as a collectible, & opens itself up to a new generation of readers. Fair-Good. [Item #8246]

Price: $50.00