An An Anthology of Mine by Rex Whistler

An An Anthology of Mine by Rex Whistler

A facsimile edition of the 'little anthology' of favourite poems compiled and illustrated by Rex Whistler in 1923. This is a personal collection, hand-written and embellished, by a young artist who had recently discovered poetry. Rex Whistler was just eighteen and in his first year at the Slade when he began to compile it, using an ordinary ruled exercise book to keep his handwriting straight. The poems are well known and well loved, the watercolours are enchanting. Every page shows Rex Whistler's new-found delight in verse of a romantic kind: Keats, Marvell, de la Mare, Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Tennyson, Gray, Edith Sitwell and others. But, though serious about the poems, he could not, being Rex Whistler, deny himself flippancy on a title page, or in a pencilled comment added to Keats' woebegone knight-at-arms. Whistler made this earliest of all his illustrated books for his own pleasure. It was first published, in an abbreviated edition, in 1981, almost sixty years after Whistler compiled it, and has long been out of print. This splendid new edition, an exact facsimile of the original, is alive with the youthful pleasure that first inspired the brightly coloured fantasies of 1923. A separate booklet includes Laurence Whistler's afterword to the 1981 edition, a new introduction by Hugh and Mirabel Cecil, and a note from the publishers describing the process of producing the facsimile.

“HandsomeIndeed, it is a treasure of contemporary bookmaking.”

* Spectator *

"An artist whose supreme gift was to delight and entertain, and an attractive and worldly figure whose talent combined sophistication and innocence with a natural humour that defies solemn analysis."

-- Michael Ratcliffe

Rex Whistler (1905-1944) was one of the most talented and intriguing painters of the twentieth century. He was also a superb draughtsman.† Rex Whistler's younger brother, Laurence Whistler (1912-2000) was an artist and poet. Military historian Dr Hugh Cecil's books include The Flower of Battle: How Britain Wrote the Great War (Steerforth, 1996). Mirabel Cecil is author of A Kind of Prospero (Walker, 1996) and, with David Mlinaric, Mlinaric On Decorating (Frances Lincoln, 2008). Together Hugh and Mirabel Cecil have written Clever Hearts: a Life of Desmond and Molly MacCarthy (Gollancz, 1990), which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Marsh Biography Award, Imperial Marriage (History Press, 2005) and, most recently, In Search of Rex Whistler: His Life and His Work (Frances Lincoln, 2012). Mirabel Cecil is author of A Kind of Prospero (Walker, 1996) and, with David Mlinaric, Mlinaric On Decorating (Frances Lincoln, 2008). Together Hugh and Mirabel Cecil wrote Clever Hearts: a Life of Desmond and Molly MacCarthy (Gollancz, 1990), which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Marsh Biography Award, Imperial Marriage (History Press, 2005) and In Search of Rex Whistler: His Life and His Work (Frances Lincoln, 2012). Their two volume work about Rex Whistler, Inspirations, was published by Pimpernel Press in April 2015.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781910258156
ISBN 10	1910258156
Title	An An Anthology of Mine
Author	Rex Whistler
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Gemini Books Group Ltd
Year published	2015-11-05
Number of pages	88
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.