Maurice Sendak & Other Books for Adults With this catalogue we celebrate Sendak’s work and the perfect good sense he made so much of the time. The first half spans nearly the entirety of his career, from A Hole Is To Dig (with Ruth Krauss, 1952) through to his first and only pop-up book Mommy? in 2006. Along the way we have an exceptionally rare page-proof of Where the Wild Things Are, a large dossier of publication and advertising materials for Outside Over There (which Sendak considered his finest work) and his two major retrospectives, edited by Selma Lanes (1980) and by Tony Kushner (2003).
The second half of the catalogue is a simple celebration: illustrated books are for adults! We don’t have to read words all the time! The themes of these “picture-books for adults” run the gamut: cocktails, the bible, hatred for a celebrated lexicographer, hard drugs. Much good illustration came from the Beats: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Ralph Steadman (if we extend the label so far). R. Crumb is a rich vein; we begin with his absolutely magnificent Sad Book and follow his career through his sketcbooks from the 1960’s, the aforementioned illustration of Genesis (so dirty!) and the development of his daughter Sophie’s individual style. Beyond that we find the first appearance of the Star Wars story, illustrated Frankensteins and the macabre Charles Addams (of Family fame) and Edward Gorey up through Charles Burns’s X’ed Out, which we’d call a “graphic novel” if we hadn’t learned our lesson.
How to request a print version: For a printed catalogue, kindly write to info@pryorjohnsonrarebooks.com.
