The Gently Mad Book Shop
VINES Poems by David Burnett : Engravings by Richard Shirley Smith : Ltd Edition
VINES Poems by David Burnett : Engravings by Richard Shirley Smith : Ltd Edition
Regular price
£95.00 GBP
Regular price
Sale price
£95.00 GBP
Unit price
per
Tax included.
Couldn't load pickup availability
Vines : Poems by David Burnett
Wood engravings by Richard Shirley Smith
Publishd by The Rocket Press, Oxforshire, 1984. Limited edition, 48/200.
Vines has been hand-set in Bell type and printed by Jonathan Stephenson at The Rocket Press on Zerkall mould-made paper. Bound with marbled paper from Compton Marbling and Richard de Bas hand-made endpapers. The edition is limited to 200 copies of which numbers 1 to 50 are hardbaound with additional signed prints of the engravings and numbers 51 to 200 are sewn into soft covers. This copy is number 48.
Hardcover in slipcase and in complete condition, signed to the limitation page by Richard Shirley Smith and with the two signed wood engravings present. Also included is a spare title label which is found tipped onto the rear endpaper.
CONDITION
A very good clean copy of this limited edition. Slipcase very good. Book very clean throughout. The two signed engravings are in very good condition. A fine copy.
Alfred David Burnett was born in Edinburgh, but his childhood was spent near Hyderabad, India, where his father was superintendent of His Exalted Highness, The Nizam’s Guaranteed State Railway.
He returned to Edinburgh with his mother and brother after the war and was educated at George Watson’s Collage before studying English Literature at Edinburgh University, where he was awarded the Patterson Bursary in Anglo-Saxon.
In 1959 Burnett began his career as a librarian, first at the University of Glasgow Library, specialising in olden books and manuscripts, winning the Kelso Memorial prize in bibliography, 1964, the same year he moved to Durham.
Burnett worked as a librarian at the University of Durham until he retired in the 1990s. Whilst there he was awarded the Library Association Essay Prize in 1966, the Sevensma prize from the International Federation of Library Associations in 1971 and a Panizzi Medal by the British Library.
In Durham, Burnett was responsible for exhibitions focusing on the work of numerous writers, including fellow poets such as Basil Bunting and Ian Hamilton Finlay. In 1975, he co-founded Colpitts Poetry, which brought Durham to be a hub for live poetry readings and helped foster a broad community for writing in the area.
Outwith his own poetry, Burnett wrote and edited a variety of papers and books, including a selection of Andrew Young’s poems, Crystal and Flint (Snake River Press, 1991), Temenos, poems by John Meade Falkner (Tragara Press, 1993), Arabic Resources Acquisition and Management in British Libraries (Mansell, 1986) and, A Thinker For All Seasons- Sir Francis Bacon and His Significance Today (New Century Press, 2000).
Returning to Edinburgh in 2009, he continued to write. He left this ‘final poem and testament’ to posterity:
Renewal
A house of leaves. Against each pane
Trunks thrust and grieve, and the mad air
In each place loosens a dry rain,
A forest and its forester.
Such peace, yet still a house of leaves,
A harvest sickled for this sheaf,
Each joist braced in this arc of eaves,
The timber breaking into leaf.
Burnett’s collection of modern British wood engravings is in the Yale Center for British Art and his publications archive, papers and correspondence are in the Beinecke, the rare books and manuscripts division of Yale University Library.
Wood engravings by Richard Shirley Smith
Publishd by The Rocket Press, Oxforshire, 1984. Limited edition, 48/200.
Vines has been hand-set in Bell type and printed by Jonathan Stephenson at The Rocket Press on Zerkall mould-made paper. Bound with marbled paper from Compton Marbling and Richard de Bas hand-made endpapers. The edition is limited to 200 copies of which numbers 1 to 50 are hardbaound with additional signed prints of the engravings and numbers 51 to 200 are sewn into soft covers. This copy is number 48.
Hardcover in slipcase and in complete condition, signed to the limitation page by Richard Shirley Smith and with the two signed wood engravings present. Also included is a spare title label which is found tipped onto the rear endpaper.
CONDITION
A very good clean copy of this limited edition. Slipcase very good. Book very clean throughout. The two signed engravings are in very good condition. A fine copy.
Alfred David Burnett was born in Edinburgh, but his childhood was spent near Hyderabad, India, where his father was superintendent of His Exalted Highness, The Nizam’s Guaranteed State Railway.
He returned to Edinburgh with his mother and brother after the war and was educated at George Watson’s Collage before studying English Literature at Edinburgh University, where he was awarded the Patterson Bursary in Anglo-Saxon.
In 1959 Burnett began his career as a librarian, first at the University of Glasgow Library, specialising in olden books and manuscripts, winning the Kelso Memorial prize in bibliography, 1964, the same year he moved to Durham.
Burnett worked as a librarian at the University of Durham until he retired in the 1990s. Whilst there he was awarded the Library Association Essay Prize in 1966, the Sevensma prize from the International Federation of Library Associations in 1971 and a Panizzi Medal by the British Library.
In Durham, Burnett was responsible for exhibitions focusing on the work of numerous writers, including fellow poets such as Basil Bunting and Ian Hamilton Finlay. In 1975, he co-founded Colpitts Poetry, which brought Durham to be a hub for live poetry readings and helped foster a broad community for writing in the area.
Outwith his own poetry, Burnett wrote and edited a variety of papers and books, including a selection of Andrew Young’s poems, Crystal and Flint (Snake River Press, 1991), Temenos, poems by John Meade Falkner (Tragara Press, 1993), Arabic Resources Acquisition and Management in British Libraries (Mansell, 1986) and, A Thinker For All Seasons- Sir Francis Bacon and His Significance Today (New Century Press, 2000).
Returning to Edinburgh in 2009, he continued to write. He left this ‘final poem and testament’ to posterity:
Renewal
A house of leaves. Against each pane
Trunks thrust and grieve, and the mad air
In each place loosens a dry rain,
A forest and its forester.
Such peace, yet still a house of leaves,
A harvest sickled for this sheaf,
Each joist braced in this arc of eaves,
The timber breaking into leaf.
Burnett’s collection of modern British wood engravings is in the Yale Center for British Art and his publications archive, papers and correspondence are in the Beinecke, the rare books and manuscripts division of Yale University Library.
