No Dress Rehearsal, Baby

New York: Ink, Inc, no date. An uncommon and compelling collection of fine press literary broadsides by Ink, Inc., a graphic design, printing, and print-brokerage house established in 1978 by Thomas Whitridge. The title sheet includes the first eight lines of Wallace Stevens’s 1947 poem “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” printed at upper left. The Virginia Woolf broadside includes a paragraph from her 1928 essay, “The Sun and the Fish,” accompanied by a portrait of an exemplary fish: “In their shape is their reason.” The Raymond Chandler broadside reprints a famous incident in his 1939 detective novel The Big Sleep, when Philip Marlowe discovers a Sternwood sister in his bed. The Vladimir Nabokov broadside features a passage from his 1972 short novel Transparent Things, while the Jean Anouilh broadside includes an exchange between the lovers at the center of his 1945 play, Romeo et Jeannette. A fine complete set, unrecorded institutionally and in commerce. Five loose broadside sheets, measuring 18 x 13 inches, wrapped in original glassine and mylar wrapper blindstamped “Ink, Inc. / New York.” Woolf, Chandler, and Nabokov broadsides printed in two colors. Glassine split at fold and chipped at edges, broadsides fine. (Inventory #: 1003945)