Artists’ Books and Rare Books for Sale » Blog Archive » Bookbinder Paul Delrue. Twenty Poems of Walking by Ivor Gurney.

Bookbinder Paul Delrue. Twenty Poems of Walking by Ivor Gurney.

$6,250.00

(Delrue, Paul – Bookbinder) Ivor Gurney: Twenty Poems of Walking. Selected with an Introduction by R.K.R. Thornton. Tern Press. [Market Drayton. Shropshire.] 2007. 33p. 12” x 8.75”. Set in Poliphilus and Blado by Kelsey Thornton. Printed on Magnani paper with lithographs by Nicholas Parry. One in an edition of 30 copies signed by Nicholas Parry & Mary Parry.

Unique binding by Paul Delrue in February/March of 2008. Bound in mid-brown goatskin with two multi-colored lacunosed panels on the front and back boards; blind tooling, with the title in gold on the spine. Green and pale blue endpapers. All edges colored with greens, browns, yellows to reflect the feel of nature, and footsteps sinking in mud. Housed in a green buckram box lined with brown suede, gold title at bottom and spine of box. Signed and dated by Paul Delrue on the colophon page, as well as his stamp at the bottom of the front doublure. Fine. Slight bump to front edge of box cover.

“The poems have all been re-edited from their sources. Slight editorial changes and some punctuation have been introduced: Gurney’s dots have been standardized to a regular three; apostrophes have been supplied where necessary; titles of plays and other works have been italicized; Gurney’s amendments have been incorporated.” – Colophon.

Delrue writes: “As a poet of Gloucestershire, Ivor Gurney is remembered as a poet of war and madness. He sees the straightness of the streets, themselves as a symbol of the restrictions on man’s spirit, and also finds the possibility of a radiant glimpse of beauty within the cities’ drabness. He can see the liveliness of the people and the potential for beauty in the sky. His whole knowledge and love of [England] was enriched and confirmed by his walks around it. … “I intend[ed] to capture the ‘walker’, perhaps Ivor Gurney alone in trouble thought, walking towards pain of death, with the sky brooding reds and black, a bleakness of life. The great war and it’s many pains.” “Nicholas Parry has captured in his lithographs a sadly wild landscape and gives to Gurney’s poems real meaning of expression of the lonely traveller.”