Journal of the week — Liberator

05 Monday Sep 2016

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art, Communist Party of America, Crystal Eastman, e. e. cummings, eat, Ernest Hemingway, Europe, fiction, Floyd Dell, government, Helen Keller, Howard Brubaker, John Dos Passos, John Reed, Labor Herald, Liberator, Max Eastman, New York, newsprint, poetry, politics, reporting, Robert Minor, Soviet Russia, Soviet Russia Pictorial, The Masses, United States, work, Workers Monthly, World War I

“I have to work here but I don’t have to eat here.” — Howard Brubaker (1882-1957)

LIBERATOR
New York: The Liberator Publishing Co., Inc.
HX1 L5

Liberator began publication under the editorship of Max Eastman (1883-1969) in March 1918. Eastman’s sister, Crystal, worked closely with him, and wrote many of the reports from Europe. Liberator was published to take place of the American radical periodical, The Masses, which had been shut down by the United States government in December 1917 as offensive and contrary to mailing regulations during World War I. The Masses was anti-war. Many of its editors and writers contributed to Liberator.

Liberator fused politics, art, poetry and fiction. The international reporting that came out of it was among the best in the United States, including stories filed by the legendary John Reed (1887-1920) from Soviet Russia. Other contributing artists and writers included e. e. cummings (1884-1962), John Dos Passos (1896-1970), Ernest Hemingway (1999-1961), Helen Keller (1880-1968), and Carl Sandburg (1878-1967). Almost every important radical or liberal literary figure of the time was represented in it.

The Liberator began to take a definite political line. In 1922, Eastman left the Liberator, and the Communist Party of America (CPA) took it over. It merged with Labor Herald and Soviet Russia Pictorial to form Workers Monthly, an organ of the CPA, in November 1924. Prime movers Max Eastman and Floyd Dell (1887-1969) left the editorial board, and Robert Minor (1884-1952) and other closer followers of the Communist line replaced them.

The publication, from its evocative cover art, to the typesetting required to meet the standards of its writers, was expensive to produce. To offset cost, Eastman used cheap newsprint, resulting in a publication that is incredibly fragile. Few copies survive.

Thank you, Anonymous!

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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1960s, 1970s, Albert Camus, Alfred Hitchcock, California, catalog, Curtis all-rag, DelMonico Books, e. e. cummings, educator, Frances Elizabeth Kent, German, Great Depression, Ian Berry, Immaculate Heart College, Immaculate Heart College Press, Italian, John Cage, judge, Lilian Marks, Lilian Simon, London, Los Angeles, love, Martin Luther King, Michael Duncan, Munich, museums, New York, nun, Ohio, peace, Pennsylvania, Pirandello, Plantin Press, plays, playwright, poems, poet, Poland, Prestel, Roman Catholic, Saul Marks, serigraphs, silkscreen, Sister Mary Corita, Sisters fo the Immaculate Heart of Mary, soldier, The Frances Young Yang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, theater, Ugo Betti, United States

A generous donation from Anonymous adds to our growing collection of material documenting the 1960s.

The Words of Ugo Betti. Innocence and the Process of Justification in the Late Plays…
Los Angeles: Immaculate Heart College Press, 1965

Ugo Betti (1892-1953) was an Italian judge and poet. He is considered by some to be the greatest Italian playwright since Pirandello. He wrote his first poems while a soldier in German captivity (1917-18). They were published as Il Re Pendieroso in 1922. After the success of his first play, La Padrona, he worked exclusively in theater, for which he wrote twenty-seven plays.

Illustrated with eight serigraphs by Sister Mary Corita (born Frances Elizabeth Kent) (1918-1986), a Roman Catholic nun and educator who worked with silkscreen — incorporating scriptural quotation, excerpts from well-known authors such as e.e. cummings and Albert Camus, song lyrics, and grocery store signs into her art. Kent belonged to the order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. While teaching at Immaculate Heart College her students included John Cage and Alfred Hitchcock. Her work, focused on the themes of love and peace, were popular during the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. One of her best known works is “Love Your Brother,” a 1969 piece that features photographs of Martin Luther King overlaid with words in her handwritings. She is famous for her 1985 “Love” stamp.

Sister Mary said, “I really love the look of letters – the letters themselves become a kind of subject matter even apart from their meaning – like apples or oranges are for artists.”

Printed on Curtis all-rag paper at the Plantin Press, Los Angeles. Edition of two hundred and seventy-five copies.

The Plantin Press, a small private press, was begun in 1931 by Saul and Lilian Marks. Saul Marks learned the printing trade in Poland during WWI. He emigrated to the United States in 1921, where he met and married Lilian Simon. The Marks’ moved to Los Angeles in 1930 and set up shop in the midst of the Great Depression. Lilian Marks continued the press after Saul died in 1974, until she sold the business in 1985.

The donation included a catalog accompanying the exhibition, “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent,” curated by Ian Berry and Michael Duncan, which traveled to museums in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and California between 2013 and 2015.

Someday is Now: the Art of Corita Kent
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
DelMonico Books, Prestel: Munich, London, New York, 2013

OPEN BOOK

~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

Tag Archives: e. e. cummings

Journal of the week — Liberator

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