TO Belle da Costa Greene / Daniel Berkeley Updike / Carl Purington Rollins / William Mills Ivins, Jr. / Bruce Rogers / Paul A. Bennett / The American Institute of Graphic Arts
New York: The Museum Press, 1939. Quarto (10 inches tall) booklet, four leaves sewn, self-title with single page of text. Bookplate. Some light spotting and marginal toning to first page. Very good indeed. Item #1301
"SOLE LETTERS HAVE NO FATE AND REPULSE DEATH / SOLE LETTERS OF A BOOK CAN REVIVE THE PAST"
Museum Press booklet with Latin verse by a medieval Benedictine—printed in appreciation of a very select group of the great American bookmen of the twentieth century. The personal copy of Paul A. Bennett—a founding member of The Typophiles—with his red-and-white bookplate tipped inside the folded leaf. Likely one of a very limited number of copies printed—a testament to the incarnational nature of book-making, with exemplary provenance.
Foremost among this pantheon of celebrated bookmen (which includes Daniel Berkeley Updike and Bruce Rogers) is a woman—Belle da Costa Greene. She is listed first, in recognition of her formidable influence as J.P. Morgan's personal librarian and later as the head of the Morgan Library. An obituary in the New York Times described "Belle D. Greene, for many years the director of the Morgan Library" as "a somewhat fabulous figure at auction sales, who had the power to spend" and noted that "she enjoyed a very wide reputation among bibliophiles" (May 12,1950). The London Times Literary Supplement praised "the prescriptive dignity of her office, her single-minded devotion...her canny sense of quality in books or manuscripts...set Miss Greene in a unique position in the library world."
Printed before the war, perhaps for presentation at a gathering in recognition of their patronage of the Museum Press, the interior leaf prints "Ad Eigilum," a verse by the German monk Hrabanus Maurus (A. D. 776 - 856). The booklet is accompanied by a typescript English translation, typed on embossed letterhead: "Hotel Grammercy Park / 52 Gramercy Park North / New York." The verse, addressed "To Eigilius, about the book he has written," is a paean to the Republic of Letters: "Sole Letters have no fate and repulse death / Sole the Letters of a book revive the past."
Price: $250.00