James Cummins Bookseller

New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1963.

Price: $1,000.00

About the item

One of three hundred copies. Frontispiece of the Brontë sisters by the author. [12], 35, [1] pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Inscribed. Original violet wrappers, printed in black. Some fading at edges of wrappers. Very good copy of a scarce work, inscribed by the editor, James Merrill, and with four corrections to the text in Merrill’s hand. Hagstrom B11.

Item #259503

Whimsical operetta of the Brontë sisters, by the Alexandrian artist and librettist Bernard de Zogheb (1924-1999), who was one of the last survivors of the cosmopolitan Alexandria of an earlier age. “But beyond his work as an artist, it is arguably Bernard's comic operettas that are his most outstanding achievement. Set to popular tunes, the libretti are written in Bernard's ‘kitchen Italian,’ with much tongue-in-cheek ventriloquism of the mannerisms and verbal macaronics typical of Mediterranean cities, particularly Alexandria. Often in these operettas the conventions of high art are rendered in camp […] Originally written for the consumption of his circle of friends, Bernard's operettas caught the attention of the late American poet James Merrill. It was thanks to Merrill that the Little Players, a puppet theatre company in New York, had two of them performed in the late '60s and early '70s. The memory of the performances of Le Vacanze a Parigi (The Vacation in Paris), and Phaedra, adapted from Racine, was an abiding source of pride to Bernard” (Hala Halim, in Al-Ahram, 1999).

From Merrill’s foreword: “The reader will search in vain for the gloomy, introspective Brontës … In their place, three wild extroverts ride the familiar Mediterranean pendulum between the most lavish endearments and the coarsest recriminations.” Playfully inscribed by Merrill to a long-time friend and admirer, bookseller and collector Robert Wilson of the Phoenix Book Shop: "al fedele lettore sconosciuto Robert Wilson — Salui cordiali dell’ editore, James Merrill”.