Occult & Esoterica
[WALLACE, Dr. William, et al.] Eily. Austin Osman Spare's Muse (Deluxe Edition of 100 copies)
[WALLACE, Dr. William, et al.] Eily. Austin Osman Spare's Muse (Deluxe Edition of 100 copies)
London: Jerusalem Press, 2016. First Edition. Hardcover. Tall octavo. 204pp. Deluxe Edition limited to 100 hand-numbered copies, this being No. 18. Quarter bound in black leather over mauve cloth in dust jacket and slipcase. Marbled endpapers. Page marker ribbon. Color and b&w plate sections and additional illustrations in text. Laid in is a limitation card SIGNED BY William Wallace, Alison Henry, Caroline Wise, and Stephen Pochin. Also laid in is a folded Spare print, and a small errata slip. All housed in a marbled slipcase. A beautiful production. All components are in fine condition.
Wallace analyses Spare’s debt to Theatre, Shakespeare, the Classics, Lewis Carroll and Nietzsche. At the centre of this literary and philosophical orbit we find the artist’s wife, Eily, who is here brought out of the shadows for the first time and her influence upon Spare’s art and life is measured. There is no doubt that for a very short time she became his muse; during which he produced The Book of Pleasure. There is also assessment of Spare’s Tarot deck, revealing his early awareness of Alchemical symbolism. There is also a study of the influence of Hogarth’s satires upon Earth:Inferno and A Book of Satyrs. Additional essays by Caroline Wise (on Muses and Oracles of the Greek Myths); Alison Henry, Eily's granddaughter, provides a biographical sketch; and Stephen Pochin examines Spare’s appropriation of depictions of actresses from Edwardian theatre postcards, with several key stars of the period ending up in A Book of Satyrs. He also offers the solution to a mystery; the identification of the model who replaced Eily in his drawings of nudes from 1919-22, some of which appear in The Golden Hind.