Master Richard's Bestiary of Love and Response (Translated by Jeanette Beer)
- SIGNED
- North Hatfield, Massachusetts: Pennyroyal Press, 1985
North Hatfield, Massachusetts: Pennyroyal Press, 1985. First thus. Fine. One of 200 copies, this one marked "AP" and signed in pencil by Barry Moser on the colophon. Unpaginated. With forty-six engravings by Moser. Designed by Barry Moser and Chase Twichell and printed by Harold McGrath. Original full vellum. In the original pale blue cloth slipcase with a bit of dampstaining. A Fine copy in the Very Good slipcase.
Master Richard's Bestiary of Love and Response collects Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour (1252), which figures animals in "a new demonstration of the psychological posturings of love," and a Response by an anonymous, contemporary woman writer. The Response is "an answer to Richard's challenge...Her rejection of Richard may have been personal or it may have been on behalf of womankind. Her neo-platonism in love counters the climate of Aristotelianism which characterizes Richard's bestiary...the two works are in fact an articulation of the eternal debate between MAN and WOMAN" (from the preface).
Barry Moser is the founder of the Pennyroyal Press and a master engraver best known for his portraits of writers and artists. His masterpiece is the Pennyroyal Caxton Press Bible, an ambitious two-volume production with over 230 illustrations. Other celebrated Moser productions include the Arion Press edition of Moby-Dick (1977), which he illustrated; the Pennyroyal Press editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1982), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1985), and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (also 1985); and Portraits (2010), a portfolio of some of his most admired pieces with a series of twenty-five new portraits. Fine.
Master Richard's Bestiary of Love and Response collects Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour (1252), which figures animals in "a new demonstration of the psychological posturings of love," and a Response by an anonymous, contemporary woman writer. The Response is "an answer to Richard's challenge...Her rejection of Richard may have been personal or it may have been on behalf of womankind. Her neo-platonism in love counters the climate of Aristotelianism which characterizes Richard's bestiary...the two works are in fact an articulation of the eternal debate between MAN and WOMAN" (from the preface).
Barry Moser is the founder of the Pennyroyal Press and a master engraver best known for his portraits of writers and artists. His masterpiece is the Pennyroyal Caxton Press Bible, an ambitious two-volume production with over 230 illustrations. Other celebrated Moser productions include the Arion Press edition of Moby-Dick (1977), which he illustrated; the Pennyroyal Press editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1982), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1985), and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (also 1985); and Portraits (2010), a portfolio of some of his most admired pieces with a series of twenty-five new portraits. Fine.