Search Results: Titles starting with E from Honey & Wax Booksellers

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1895. Limited edition, one of 450 copies printed by the DeVinne Press, of Edmund Spenser's ode to his bride Elizabeth Boyle, first published in 1595: "Set all your things in seemely good aray / Fit for so joyfull day, / The joyfulst day that ever sunne did see." The poem's twenty-four stanzas correspond to the hours of the wedding day, as Spenser describes the morning's preparations, the ceremony, the feast, and the final "safety of our joy" after nightfall. The decorative Art Nouveau binding and illustrations, informed by English private press book design, are the work of American painter George Wharton Edwards: "From cover to cover the book carries out one artistic scheme with the text, presenting a unique conception which is original with the artist" (Dodd, Mead & Company.) This edition of 450 copies was issued alongside a signed limited edition of 25 copies on vellum. Provenance: Lee D. Witkin, the influential New York gallerist who created the modern market for… Read More

New York: Aeolian Hall, 1924. Original program for Paul Whiteman's experimental concert on February 12, 1924, featuring the premiere of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Whiteman intended the event at New York's Aeolian Hall "to be purely educational," showcasing "the tremendous strides which have been made in popular music." Through new arrangements and original material, most notably Gershwin's bold rhapsody, Whiteman hoped to legitimize a scored version of "modern Jazz" in the context of the classical concert hall. In the program's opening section, titled "The Why of This Experiment," Whiteman elevates jazz into the sphere of high culture while remaining pointedly silent on the African-American roots of that controversial genre, "which sprang into existence about ten years ago from nowhere in particular." The program provides biographies of Whiteman's musical collaborators and extensive notes on the featured compositions. Whiteman reserves his highest praise for George Gershwin: "He is capable… Read More