J. BOSWELL. Life of Johnson. 1922. 10 volumes, ltd. edition. Orig. boards, publisher's set + letter

From the Dobo collection.

The first 36 lots in this sale are from the collection of Francis Dobo (1908-1998)

James BOSWELL (1740-1795). The Life of Samuel Johnson [and: Tour to the Hebrides] by … Boswell Edited by Clement Shorter. New York: printed for Gabriel Wells by Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922. 10 volumes, octavo (8 ¾ x 5 5/8 inches; 222 x 142 mm).  Engraved portrait frontispieces and plates, titles with engraved vignettes. Original paper-backed boards, paper lettering-piece to each backstrip printed in red and black, top edges gilt, original paper wrappers (discoloration to backstrips, occasional small splits; dust-jackets in pieces with some voids, each preserved in a mylar jacket). Provenance: Gabriel Wells (1861-1946, loosely inserted TLS from printer, Frank Nelson Doubleday).

The "Temple Bar" edition, limited to 785 sets: this set is apparently made up and is variously numbered and is from the library of the publisher, Gabriel Wells.  F.N. Doubleday heaps lavish praise on this work “I think it is the most beautiful set I remember to have seen [sic.] … and I am proud to be associated with it in any capacity…’. The edition is beautifully printed and includes contributions from a number of contemporary authors: Augustine Birrell, Walter de la Mare, G.K. Chesterton, A. Edward Newton, John Drinkwater and others. Confusingly, volume IV has the cancelled bookplate of the ‘Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College’.

Francis Dobo: the “epitome of a 20th Century intellectual” Hungarian born Francis F. Dobo (1908-1998) was an important figure in the world of publishing, contemporary literature and photography for over half a century. He was lifelong friends with the renowned Hungarian masters of candid photography, Brassaï and André Kertész, first in Hungary and later in Paris in the 1930s. It was in Paris he encountered Henry Miller, Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Raymond Queneau: he corresponded and supported Miller from then on, and subsequently became Queneau’s U.S. agent.  Love of books and literature seems to have been a family trait: his uncle was Gabriel Wells (1861-1946), one of the two most important rare book dealers of his generation. The present selection includes a small number of books which belonged to Wells, with the rest being a cross section of the best of the contemporary literature which was such an important part of Francis’ life. William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Koestler, Christopher Isherwood, Norman Mailer, Franz Kafka are all here !