A Blue Book Of Conversation by John Banting - 1946

Editions Poetry London/Nicholson and Watson, London., 1946. First edition. Quarto. 57 pages. Twenty-five plates, one of which is double-page, and all of which are printed in blue. The texts are on the facing pages, apart from the double plate, where the text follows on the subsequent pages.Faint rubbing to head and tail of spine. Very good indeed. No dustwrapper.

London: Editions Poetry London, 1946. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. First edition in book form. Small thin quarto. 57pp. Illustrated title-page and 25 full-page cyanotype plates by Banting including one double-page. A bit of rubbing on the boards, a little foxing on the endpapers, very good or better in a soiled, very good dust jacket.

London, Editions Poetry London, 1946. . First edition; large 8vo; publisher's blue cloth, titles to spine gilt, minor smudge to top of spine, Banting designed dust-jacket, lightly marked, small chip at the top of the spine panel and some associated, short tears, a particularly fresh copy. Banting's remarkable 'blueprints' in his most surrealist mode, pay artistic homage to all manner of earlier, aesthetic tropes. The mode of production being a more or less conscious echo of one of the earliest photographic processes - the cyanotype, whilst the subject matter lies somewhere between the nightmares of Max Ernst and medieval bestiaries. One of the glories of the short-lived publishing house Editions Poetry London with the notoriously vulnerable dust jacket (the present example being considerably better than usual).

London: Editions Poetry,, 1946. First edition in book form, first impression of this series of drawings satirising aristocratic social gatherings, and accompanied by a short commentary. It was originally produced as a portfolio in an edition of ten copies as part of Banting's Surrealist satire For Social Service, in 1933; here they are arranged differently, accompanied by a different text, and feature an additional cyanotype title-page. Small quarto. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With dust jacket. Title page and 26 cyanotypes by the author. Spine cracked but holding, endleaves foxed, internally fresh, a very good copy in the bright jacket with shallow chips to head of panels and lower portion of spine, tear to head of spine.