Shakespear's Pound - Illuminated Cantos Signed, limited edition. by Pound, Ezra & Shakespear, Dorothy (illustrator) - 1999

Nacogdoches, Texas & London, England: LaNana Creek Press/Scolar Press, 1999. Limited edition of 210 copies, of which 200 were for sale. This is copy number 176. Signed by Omar Pound and Charles Jones. Hardback. Unpaginated. Quarter bound in Harmatan's tan leather with Japanese bookcloth over boards and presented in a matching slipcase with a printed label to its spine. The book was designed by Charles Jones who also directed all aspects of its design and execution. Printed on a Vandercook Universal III press. The text is set in Monotype using Gill Sans for the 'Cantos', Joanna for the other text, and Perpetua for display. The paper is Magnani Biblios mouldmade white wove with Hahnemulke end sheets. Pound's 'A Draft of XXX Cantos' was first published in 1930 by Nancy Cunard's Hours Press in an edition featuring initials designed by Dorothy Shakespear. During the 1930s Shakespear embarked on a series of new and more ambitious designs in black and red for a further selection of the 'Cantos' to be produced in a more elaborate edition. However, due to the events of World War II, the project was never completed. Shakespear's designs for the abandoned project are extant and form the basis for this edition. Her compositions embed the initials in landscape or genre scenes, and were clearly intended to continue the relationship between image and text as found in the two earlier editions. Precise dating of Shakespear's designs is problematic, but the majority seem to have been executed in the 1930s. This edition presents a selection of some fifty of her more finished designs from this period with excerpts from the poem beginning with canto number XXVIII and ending with number LI. As new and unread.