It’s Fine Press Friday!
This week we present a 1929 edition of Alexander Pushkin’s satirical and even blasphemous poem on the Lukan Annunciation story, Gabriel: A Poem in One Song, translated by Max Eastman, illustrated with original wood engravings by Rockwell Kent, and published in New York by Covici-Friede in a limited edition of 750 copies. The publication was handset by J. S. Jacobs and printed under his supervision at the Stratford Press in Frederic Goudy‘s newly designed Deepdene type on Arnold unbleached cream wove paper, and bound in limp vellum with a gold-stamped illustration by Kent at the American Book Bindery in New York.
Here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis of the blasphemous narrative:
God chooses [Mary] to be the mother of Jesus and sends Archangel Gabriel to announce the good news. Satan learns about God's plan and arrives first in the form of a snake to seduce and deflower Mary. Gabriel arrives too late to save her from Satan but manages to drive him off with an illegal punch to testicles. Then he quickly has his way with Mary, who had already seen him in a vision and was impatiently waiting for him. The next morning, God in the form of a dove flies into Mary's bedroom and has intercourse with her, thus thinking He has conceived Jesus.
Oh, my! Pushkin wrote the poem in 1821 while he was a student. It only circulated in manuscript and because of its impiety, it was never published in Pushkin’s lifetime. Still, enough had read it in manuscript to get the author in a lot of hot water, and it would have been off to Siberia for him if he had not appealed directly to the Tsar with the deepest contrition.
Covici-Friede was founded in 1928 by publisher Pascal Covini and Boni & Liveright vice president Donald Friede. It had considerable literary success in its short run, and Rockwell Kent corresponded with the firm from its founding to the time it folded in 1938. Gabriel was the first publication Kent illustrated for Covici-Friede and he would illustrate only one other title for them, a 2-volume Canterbury Tales published in 1930. We hold a 1934 second Covici-Friede edition of that title printed with Kent’s original plates from the 1930 edition. Our copies of Gabriel and The Canterbury Tales are both gifts from our friend Jerry Buff,
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