New Listings, April 4: Five by Nick Bantock, plus G. Garfield Crimmins, Robert Hughes, and Joseph March

Dazzling art; mysterious tales; dreamlike lands; bathtub gin; and a rumbustious Australian critic. Just a typical Saturday morning at Henry Bemis Books.

Bantock, Nick, The Venetian’s Wife (Chronicle Books, 1st ed., 1st printing, 1996). ISBN 0-8118-1140-9. A mysterious art connoisseur, communicating only by email, hires a museum curator for an equally mysterious task. Hardcover, dust jacket, very good condition. HBB price: $29.95.

Bantock, Nick, The Forgetting Room (Byzantium Books/HarperCollins, 1st ed., 1st printing, 1997). ISBN 0-00-225176-0. Another of Bantock’s mysterious tales interweaving text and illustration, this one involving a man who inherits a house in Spain from his grandfather. Hardcover, dust jacket, very good condition. HBB price: $49.95.

Bantock, Nick, The Griffin & Sabine Trilogy (Chronicle Books,

Vol. 1, Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence, (1991, 1st ed., 6th printing); Vol. 2, Sabine’s Notebook, (1992, 1st ed., 2nd printing); Vol. 3, The Golden Mean (1993, 1st ed., 1st printing). The first set of Bantock’s two Griffin & Sabine trilogies, in which- he says-  he presents “a new genre in publishing, a marriage of word and image embedded within a mysterious alchemical love story of postcards and letters.” Lavishly illustrated, these books were a publishing sensation. Hardcover dust jacket, very good condition. HBB price: $60.

Crimmins, G. Garfield, The Republic of Dreams: A Reverie (W.W. Norton, 1st ed., 1st printing, 1998). ISBN 0-393-046433-8. A dazzling book, filled- literally- with zeppelin tickets, maps, telegrams, and even a Poetic License from the author’s dream visits to the utopian island of Reves. It brings to mind, somehow, a cross between Nick Bantock and the 1940 Robert Arthur short story, “Postpaid to Paradise,” about the Federated States of Eldorado and their fabulous stamps. Hardcover, unclipped dustjacket, fine condition. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, fine condition, 95 pp. Rare. HBB price: $39.95.

Hughes, Robert, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (Alfred A. Knopf, 1st ed., 1997). ISBN 0-679-42627-2. Companion to the PBS series, this volume is classic Hughes: Big, vivid and full of the cocksure judgements, expressed in vigorous prose. The Australian-born journalist (1938-2012)and art critic called the book his “love letter to America.” A large, handsome volume, 8’ x 10”. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, near-fine condition. 633 pp. HBB price: $79.95.

March,  Joseph Moncure, The Wild Party (Pantheon, 1st ed., 1st printing, 1994). ISBN 0-679-42450-4. Woodcut illustrations by Art Spiegelman. Elegant reissue of the Jazz Age classic, first published in 1928. Spiegelman’s woodcuts are of the period. 8.75” x 5.5”, hardcover, unclipped dust jacket. Very good condition. HBB price: $39.95.