When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.by Christina Rossetti
“I once knew a man who bought antique books by the foot to fill the majestic library of a new house…”
When you need ten feet of books…
Half Price Books does “Books By The Yard” on the same principle, and also has “books by the foot” in a lot of their brick and mortar stores. <3 I’ve often seen the latter filled out with vintage books I’ve never heard of that would be nifty just to have and read, which they also stock individually for a couple bucks apiece.
Luzinterruptus - Literature Vs. Traffic.
Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus is at it again. This past June the group travelled to Australia to create a massive, traffic-stopping installation using thousands of glowing books scattered across Federation Square in Melbourne. Titled “Literature vs Traffic” the installation was created using books that had been collected by the Salvation Army after being discarded from public libraries. The project aimed to take control of public space and install itsel in the streets, stealing precious space from the dense traffic in the area. (via)
Wives and Stunners: The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Muses by Henrietta Garnett – review →
Found in shops, pubs or simply the street, these odd-looking girls with their columnar necks and bruised mouths find themselves wrenched out of their drudging daily lives and projected into a world of stately archetypes. Under the archaizing gaze of their fogey-ish lovers, these modern city girls become goddesses, queens, madonnas and penitent whores.
And that, really, is pretty much how they remain in Garnett’s strangely inert account. For although recent scholarship has done much to emphasise Lizzie Siddal as a talented artist in her own right (you can see her work at the Tate’s new blockbuster exhibition), you certainly wouldn’t guess it from Garnett, who dismisses Siddal’s paintings in a couple of sentences as “derivative” while spending pages on her lustrous hair and laudanum habit.
Likewise Jane Morris gets virtually no credit for leading the revival in needlework skills that became such an integral component of the arts and crafts movement of the 1870s and beyond. Instead, sultry Jane is confined to a narrative that dwells in immense detail on her anguished triangle with Morris and Rossetti. While we hear all about her posing as Astarte, Mariana and Proserpine, her exquisite embroidery is shuffled off to a couple of scenes in which she stitches quietly in the background. In one she’s even lying on a sofa.
Looks like this might be one I don’t need to add to the groaning PR bookshelf. Anyone have a different perspective on it?
Elizabeth Siddal
-Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I suck at favorites, but if this isn’t my favorite of the Hastings “Guggums,” it’s in the top three or so.
Amazing Stage Filled With Gigantic Fairy Tale Books via @mymodernmet
Touted as one of the world’s largest music festival, Tomorrowland is known for their unique fantasy amusement park setting. This year, an entire stage was filled with a library of gigantic fairy tale books to create a sort of magical country.
More at mymodernmet.com
….no Brontes? //criesKansas City Public Library, Missouri. The building was designed by Dimensional Innovations. Local residents selected the titles of the books that are displayed on the bookshelf.
send me a book title →
book: haven’t read | want to read | hated it | it was okay | good | wonderful | loved it | one of my favorite books | best ever | other:
‘The story of the glittering plain or The land of living men’ by William Morris. Published 1894 by Kelmscott Press.
See the complete book here.
‘Pre-Raphaelite ballads’ by William Morris, with many illustrations and decorative borders in black and white by H. M. O’Kane. Published 1900 by A. Wessel Co.
See the complete book here.
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