THE CATALPA MONOGRAPHS. A Critical Survey of Austin Osman Spare.

Limited edition. Publisher's original purple boards with silver titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. Three sections of colour plates and over 100 images in black and white throughout the text. Errata slip laid in at the rear. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owners' marks. Complete with the original dustwrapper that has a small scuff to the right edge of the upper panel and a few light dust marks.

Issued in a limited edition of 900 copies, this example is numbered 325 in ink on the colophon. A revised and much expanded republication of the classic, and now long out of print, set: 'The Early Work of Austin Osman Spare, 1900-1919' and 'The Later Work of Austin Osman Spare, 1917-1956', which was originally issued in 1989. This new edition includes twenty early ink drawings from a recently discovered private collection. Also, an extensive new introduction analyses the themes and obsessions in Spare's art, including palimpsests and Realism. Added to this are fifty unpublished artworks by Austin Spare, with an expansion of the text of the original books and themes. William Wallace returns to his first works as the basis for a new and updated inquiry into the volatile essence of Spare's art. In the interim, Wallace spent more than twenty years in research in the source imagery, and many new insights and revelations have emerged. By continuing to follow Spare's creative impetus, the author has explored not only classic occult texts and the alchemical arts, but has also found a rich vein of reference and allusion to the biblical texts, together with the art of Blake, Hogarth and Shakespeare - Publisher's blurb.