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Tag Archives: playwright

Book of the Week — Offering Time: Songs

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Amy Hutchinson, Bangladesh, birch, Blue Heron Press, Gitanjali, Indian, Japanese Nishinouchi, Karen Kunc, Lincoln, lyrics, Macmillan India Limited, Madras, music, Nebraska, Nobel Prize in Literature, playwright, poems, Rabindranath Tagore, rabindrasangeet, rare books, Romulus, Scott Beadles, songs, songwriter, Vandercook SP15, woodblocks

N7433.4-K84-O35-2001-Closeup2 copy
“Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song — the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word.” — Rabindranath Tagore

Offering Time: Songs
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Lincoln, NE: Blue Heron Press, 2001
N7433.4 K84 O35 2001

A reader of the New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote (April 16, 2017): In 1913, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore. He was the first non-Western Nobelist. Tagore was a playwright and novelist, but also a musician and songwriter. He composed, music and lyrics, nearly two thousand songs. One hundred of these were collected into Gitanjali and published in 1913. The lyrics were published without music. Western critics called the songs “poems.” It was for this collection of songs that Tagore was recognized with the Nobel prize.

In Bangladesh, Tagore’s opus of songs became known as rabindrasangeet, a musical genre unto itself. Two of his songs were chosen as national anthems. His songs are still sung throughout the Indian subcontinent.

This reminded us of Karen Kunc’s Offering Time, a brilliant book designed to be hung, printed on one side of a single sheet made of several sheets glued together, folded to form pages.

From the colophon: “These prose translations were made by Rabindranath Tagore from his original Bengali songs, published in 1913, and in current publication by Macmillan India Limited, Madras. The text is 11 point Romulus, printed on a Vandercook SP15. The paper is Japanese Nishinouchi, and the woodblocks are birch. The production was greatly assisted by intern Amy Hutchinson throughout the fall, winter, and spring amid classes and entwining projects. All of the printing and production was done at the UNL studio of Karen Kunc…marking the millennium…edition of 50 impressions…”

Rare Books copy is no. 31, signed by the artist, Karen Kunc.

N7433.4-K84-O35-2001-Closeup1 copy

N7433.4-K84-O35-2001-Hanging

Photographs by Scott Beadles

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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.

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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
Cover

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Book of the Week – Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks…

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Christopher Rich, Drury Lane, English, George Pix, George Powell, Islamic, Jean Chardin, John Harding, London, Mary Pix, plagiarism, playwright, rape, Richard Wilkin, Susanna Verbruggen, Theatre Royal, Turks


Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks…
Mary Pix (1666-1709)
London: Printed for John Harding, at the Bible and Anchor in Newport-street, and Richard Wilkin, at the King’s-Head in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1696
First edition
PR3619 P58 I37 1696

Ibrahim, the first play written by novelist and playwright Mary Pix, was first performed by Christopher Rich’s patent company at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to good reviews. It was revived several times well into the eighteenth century. Pix drew on Jean Chardin’s (1643-1713) Travels to Persia, 1686, for her depiction of the Islamic world. She captivated English audiences with the sexual mysteries of the Harem. In the first production, Susanna Verbruggen (ca. 1667-1703) played the chief of the Eunuchs.

Pix wrote at least six other plays and five more anonymous plays are attributed to her.  Her work often put stronger emphasis on female perspective than was usual for the time. The exotic setting for Ibrahim allowed Pix to explore questions of rape, female power, and the dynamics of resistance to authority. It has two especially strong female characters; one ambitious and manipulative, the other doomed by her virtuousness.

Mary Griffith married George Pix, a merchant tailor, in 1689.  She had two sons, George (1689-1690) and William (b. 1691). About six years later, Pix became involved in a plagiarism scandal with George Powell, a rival playwright and theatrical company manager. Pix accused Powell of keeping a manuscript she had sent, reworking and renaming the play as his own. An anonymous writer published a letter attacking Pix for her bad spelling and the audacity to publish her work. In spite of the letter, Pix’s reputation remained stable and she continued to write, but mostly anonymously. It should be noted, however, that authorship was not generally advertised on playbills, nor always given when plays were printed at this time.

 

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