Aranmen All - Rare Book Insider
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Aranmen All

Original pale green homespun linen on boards with a stamped image of a currach underway - all done in dark green. 8vo - [xi],9-192 pp. In a very nice example of the scarce dust jacket which shows only minor edge-wear. The original 6/' price is present on the front flap. Illustrated map endpapers showing the Aran Islands. Thomas O Flaherty (1891-1936) was the brother of acclaimed Irish author Liam O Flaherty. With 20 photographs throughout with 12 being still shots from the 1934 film, "Man Of Aran." A dated (1935) signature to the verso of the front free endpaper of Colm O'Lochlainn. Mr. O'Lochlainn (1892-1972) was, among other things, a printer, publisher, typographer and collector of Irish music, on the faculty of University College Dublin as well as a professor of Irish Language and Literature. In 1926 he founded the Three Candles Press, which produced this title. The liner notes on the jacket flaps were written by Colm O'Lochlainn. A very interesting provenance indeed. Near Fine / Very Good.
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Bartholmew Fayre

Folio, [10],1-11, [12, 13 mis-numbered as 6,3], 14-30, [31 mis-numbered as 13], 32-88 pp. Top edge trimmed with no loss. Also, and not to be forgiven, Jonson is spelled "Johnson" on the title page. A rather imfamous publication as Jonson was trying to add three additional plays, Bartholomew Fair, The Devil Is An Ass, and The Staple of News, to the already published "Workes" (1616). These plays were to be issued by I.B. (John Beale) for Robert Allot. When Jonson saw the printed publications he was appalled at the poor quality and execution by Beale and aborted the project. The plays finally appeared in the 1640 Collected Works. The plays were never sold, or at least there is no record of such, but were probably distributed. The copy offered here has been re-bound in the 20th century in 1/4 leather with marbled boards. The leather spine is without text. On the front paste-down is the book-plate of George Speight. George Victor Speight (1914-2005), was a theatre historian, author, performer, bibliophile, and an authority on puppets, puppetry and mechanical toy theatre. In this original text, "Puppets" are listed in "The Persons Of The Play." From the Induction scene Jonson writes (I will use the text here as written) "Hee is loth to make Nature afraid in like Drolleries, to mixe his head with other mens heeles, let the concupisence of jigges and Dances, raigne strong as it will amongst you : yet if the Puppets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in." Act V, scenes 1 - 3 are concerned with the puppet show - those looking forward to it and those opposed. In any case, we can see why Mr. Speight was intrigued with this title and wanted it added to his collection. "Bartholmew Fayre" is an important play, commonly regarded as among Jonson's best and, because of the tortured publishing history, extremely scarce in this edition. This is a clean bright and solid copy. Besides the pagination errors and the trimming along the top edge, there are only minor problems; two small holes (pp. 11 and 38), likely caused by glowing embers from a pipe. OCLC lists 11 copies. Pforzheimer - 560. STC - 14755 (14754*). Near Fine.