Catalogue Empyrean Series, Nos. 1-20 - The Empyrean Series is an imprint of Sublunary Editions, dedicated to producing new editions of overlooked ...
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Catalogue
Empyrean Series, Nos. 1–20
The Empyrean Series is an
imprint of Sublunary Editions,
dedicated to producing new
editions of overlooked works
from the history of world
literature.
Sublunary Editions Seattle, WAEmpyrean 2021-2022 Contents
About The Empyrean Series is an imprint of Sublunary Editions, Catalogue Overview 4
dedicated to producing new editions of overlooked works
from the history of world literature. Available Now 9
Distribution Titles are available for wholesale through Asterism Books at 001. Three Dreams / Jean Paul & Laurence Sterne 10
asterismbooks.com 002. Vagaries Malicieux / Djuna Barnes 12
003. The Last Days of Immanuel Kant / Thomas De Quincey 14
Masthead Jacob Siefring and Joshua Rothes, co-editors; 004. Maria Wutz / Jean Paul 16
Joshua Rothes, design 005. If You Had Three Husbands / Gertrude Stein 18
006. Fantasticks / Nicholas Breton 20
Web sublunaryeditions.com/empyrean 007. Ivan Moscow / Boris Pilnyak 22
008. Poems / Karl Kraus 24
Twitter @empyreanseries 009. Newton’s Brain / Jakub Arbes 26
010. A Looking Glasse for the Court / Antonio de Guevara 28
011. Morning Star / Ada Negri 30
012. A Cypresse Grove / Drummond of Hawthornden 32
013. Zorrilla, the Poet / José Zorrilla 34
014. Poems / Miguel de Unamuno 36
015. Essays, Paradoxes, Soliloquies / Miguel de Unamuno 38
016. Joan of Arc / Jules Michelet & Thomas De Quincey 40
017. Pages from the Diary of a Jackass / Ante Dukić 42
018. Prefaces / Jean Paul 44
019. The City of Dreadful Night and Other Writings / James Thomson 46
020. The Collected Works / Kathleen Tankersley Young 48
Preview of a Few Forthcoming Titles 50Overview SUBLUNARYEDITIONS.COM/EMPYREAN
Three Dreams / Jean Paul & Laurence Sterne, tr. Thomas De Quincey Fantasticks / Nicholas Breton
A trio of cosmic dream-visions from the eighteenth century, including A shepherd’s calendar like no other, relating the customs and seasonal
Jean Paul’s influential “The Dead Christ Proclaims That There Is No God” rituals of early modern England. The capstone to the work of a prolific
and also De Quincey’s translation of “Dream Upon the Universe.” pamphleteer who was Shakespeare’s contemporary. Old spelling ed.
$8.00 / 48 pp. $8.00 / 48 pp.
Vagaries Malicieux / Djuna Barnes Ivan Moscow / Boris Pilnyak, tr. A. Schwartzman
Early free-wheeling reportage from the expatriate capital that Djuna This shellshocked tale of Russian modernity involves a factory situated
Barnes would later call her home. Originally published in The Double deep in the Poludov Mountains, a radioactive Egyptian mummy, the
Dealer in 1922 after Barnes was sent to Paris on assignment. psychic ravages of syphilis, and a delirium born of flight.
$8.00 / 40 pp. $10.00 / 100 pp.
The Last Days of Immanuel Kant / Thomas De Quincey Poems / Karl Kraus, tr. Albert Bloch
De Quincey’s translation and adaptation of the account A collection of lyric and dramatic verse and pithy, incisive poems that
of the theologian Ehregott Andreas Wasianski, Kant’s caretaker carried Kraus’s signature critical bite in the pages of Die Fackel. Includes
and close friend during his last years. introductory essay by the translator.
$9.00 / 90 pp. $12.00 / 164 pp.
Maria Wutz / Jean Paul, tr. Francis Storr, Rose Storr, & Ruth Martin Newton’s Brain / Jakub Arbes, tr. Josef Jiří Král
A wildly elliptical narrative relating the life, marriage, rapture, and A fantastic sleight-of-hand tale involving resurrection and time travel,
death of the gentle schoolmaster Maria Wutz, who sets out to from the late 19th century. An example of the “romanetto” form which
compose a library to rival the offerings of the seasonal book fairs. the Czech author Arbes invented and perfected.
$10.00 / 72 pp. $10.00 / 108 pp.
If You Had Three Husbands / Gertrude Stein A Looking Glasse for the Court / Antonio de Guevara,
tr. Sir Francis Bryan and Jessica Sequeira
An incantatory prose poem written in the immediate wake of
Stein’s composition of Tender Buttons. Followed by Charles J. A treatise in the contemptus mundi vein exhorting the reader to leave the
Finger’s skeptical reaction piece “Moderns and Ultra-Moderns”. court and dwell in the country, from one of the most widely read authors
of the 16th century. Includes 9 pp. afterword by editor. Old spelling ed.
$8.00 / 35 pp.
$11.00 / 140 pp.
4 5Overview SUBLUNARYEDITIONS.COM/EMPYREAN
Morning Star / Ada Negri, tr. Anne Day Joan of Arc / Jules Michelet & Thomas De Quincey, tr. G. H. Smith
With a poet’s sensitivity, the adult narrator looks back on her slow Includes the complete “Maid of Orleans” from Michelet’s History of
awakening to the vicissitudes of life and the imagination in late France & De Quincey’s thorough, polemical rejoinder. A compelling
nineteenth-century Italy. instance of 19th-century historiography from two major writers.
$14.00 / 116 pp. Spring ’22 / $14.00 / 190 pp.
A Cypresse Grove / William Drummond of Hawthornden Pages from the Diary of a Jackass / Ante Dukić
A wellspring of baroque eloquence, this metaphysical tract records Satirical anti-memoir told from the point of view of a beast of burden,
Drummond’s effort to reconcile himself to the inevitability of death and subject to his master’s whims. A playful but moralistic work that satirizes
find consolation in the unchanging and eternal. Old spelling ed. the ideals of reason & the Enlightenment, with allegorical resonances.
$12.00 / 56 pp. Spring ’22 / $12.00 / 100 pp.
Zorrilla, the Poet / José Zorrilla, tr. various Prefaces / Jean Paul, tr. various
A survey of one of the most popular literary figures of 19th century Spain. A stunning selection of prefaces spanning over thirty years of Jean Paul’s
Includes Samuel Eliot’s 1846 volume of translations and biographical literary career. “It has often been a source of much annoyance to me
essay, along with Zorrilla’s most anthologized poems, and more. that to every preface I write I am obliged to append a book,” writes JP.
$10.00 / 85 pp. Spring ’22 / $16.50 / ~240 pp.
Poems / Miguel de Unamuno, tr. Eleanor Turnbull The City of Dreadful Night & Other Works / James Thomson
First published in 1952, this volume brings together exemplary A selection of the best works of a rarely reprinted Scottish writer of the
selections of Unamuno’s verse from his earliest collection, Poesias, Victorian period. Visionary & belletristic prose sketches, nightmarish
through the posthumously published Cancionero. poetry, criticism, short translations from Heine and Leopardi, etc.
$12.00 / 140 pp. Spring ’22 / $14.50 / ~200 pp.
Essays, Paradoxes, Soliloquies / Miguel de Unamuno, tr. various The Collected Works / Kathleen Tankersley Young
A selection of the best essays from two translated volumes of Unamuno’s Includes the entirety of KTY’s available work, including her three books,
prose. Matters addressed include theology, literary criticism, Spanish all of her published poems, and poems previously unpublished, sourced
culture, landscape, and philosophy. from her typescripts. Edited by Joshua Rothes & Erik LaPrade.
$16.00 / 276 pp. Spring ’22 / $18.00 / ~260 pp. with 10 color plates
6 7Subscriptions available!
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Catalogue
Nos. 1–20
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SUBLUNARYEDITIONS.COM/SUBSCRIBEWhen we are told in childhood that, at midnight,
when sleep draws near to our souls and darkens
our dreams, the dead arise from their sleep and
in churches act out the masses of the living, we
shudder then at death, on account of the dead . . .
The inaugural work in the Empyrean Series brings together three
cosmic and theological dream-visions from two of the most imaginative
and original writers of the eighteenth century. “Dream Upon the
Universe” is a translation by Thomas De Quincey of an extraterrestial
outing from Jean Paul’s late-career novel The Comet. Sterne’s “A
Dream” enacts an allegorical and heavenly journey through dream-
space, before proceeding to hand the reader the fragment’s allegorical
key. The volume concludes with “The Dead Christ Proclaims That
There Is No God”, a new version of “Rede des toten Christus vom
Weltgebäude herab, dass kein Gott sei”, a chapter in Jean Paul’s novel
Siebenkäs (1797), or Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces.
Jean Paul is the nom-de-plume of Johann Paul F. Richter (March 21,
1763–Nov. 14, 1825), a German writer of long novels noted for their
digression, warmth, and humor. After several early satirical works (at
the “vinegar-factory”, he would say), he hit a stride in the 1790s with The
Invisible Lodge (1793), Hesperus, or 45 Dog-Post Days (1795), Flower,
Series No. 001 Fruit, and Thorn Pieces (1797), Titan (1803), and Walt and Vult (1805).
Title Three Dreams
Laurence Sterne (Nov. 24, 1713–March 18, 1768) was an Anglo-
Author Jean Paul & Laurence Sterne
Irish author and cleric, best known (and rightfully so) for the novel The
Retail $8.00
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, as well as the novel
Pages 48 A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy and his collected
ISBN 978-1-955190-00-8 sermons. “Fiction had scarcely gotten started,” wrote William Gass of
Laurence Sterne
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” Sterne, “and, already, Sterne saw all round it—as well as through.”
10 11“But we have the most lovely bric-a-brac,”
said the guard, and I, answering that I
did not doubt him, went out through the
gardens, where half-destroyed satyrs
and virgins lie among the long grass,
as unmolested as the dead, for children
and nurse maids play about them with a
reverence that needs no civic reminder.
Around 1920 Djuna Barnes first went to Paris on journalistic assignment,
and produce this piece of opinion and reportage, published in The
Double Dealer in 1922. Late in life, she did not think highly of it, writing
“horrible junk” in the margins of her copy. Nevertheless it is an important,
and at times eloquent, document of a critical moment in Barnes’s life
and career among the expatriates.
Djuna Barnes (June 12, 1892-June 18, 1982) was an American writer,
journalist, and artist, one of the central figures of modernist literature.
Series No. 002 She is often remembered for her 1936 novel Nightwood.
Title Vagaries Malicieux
Author Djuna Barnes
Retail $8.00
Pages 38
ISBN 978-1-955190-01-5 Djuna Barnes
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
12 13Sometimes he would rise from his chair,
open the door, and cry out with a feeble
querulousness—“Coffee! coffee!” And
when at length he heard the servant’s
step upon the stairs, he would turn round
to us, and, as joyfully as ever sailor from
the masthead, he would call out—“Land,
land! my dear friends, I see land.”
Billed as an original piece when it appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine
in February 1827, The Last Days of Immanuel Kant is largely De Quinc-
ey’s translation and embellishment of the account of the theologian
Ehregott Andreas Wasianski, the amanuensis, friend, and caretaker of
Kant during his last years. The version of the text published here closely
follows the version published in De Quincey’s Narrative and Miscella-
neous Papers, Volume II (1853), while in several passages it follows
the revised version printed in Miscellanies: Chiefly Narrative (1854) by
James Hogg.
Thomas De Quincey (15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was
Series No. 003 a translator and essayist. Often considered one of the finest English
Title The Last Days of Immanuel Kant prose writers of the nineteenth century, he is best remembered today
Author Thomas De Quincey for his early memoir of addiction Confessions of an English Opium-Eat-
Retail $9.00 er (1821). He made his living writing principally for Blackwood’s, Tait’s
Magazine, and Hogg’s Instructor, and it was in these magazines that
Pages 90
much of his work first appeared. His prolific output includes works of lit-
ISBN 978-1-955190-06-0 Thomas De Quincey erary criticism, biographical studies, historical essays, several novellas,
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” translations from German, and original short stories.
14 15The stream of life flowed faster to his brain;
once more he dreamed he was young again; the
moon he took for the over-clouded sun; he fancied
himself a winged altar angel, hanging from a
rainbow by a chain of buttercups, swaying up
and down in a vast arch, swung across abysses
nearer and nearer up to the sun by the child
bride who gave him the tin ring.
First published in 1793, The Life of the Merry Little Schoolmaster Maria
Wutz in Auenthal is one of Jean Paul’s most beloved works. Like a
character from an undiscovered Borges story, Wutz has the audacity to
compose the works of other authors the moment they are announced
in the catalogue of the seasonal book fair. This classic novella, subtitled
A Kind of Idyll, relates not only the unusual literary career of the merry
schoolmaster, but also his life, wedding-day, and deathbed rapture.
This version of the text is adapted from Francis and Rose Storr’s
translation, printed in Maria Wuz and Lorenz Stark (London: Longmans,
Green, & Co, 1881). Several passages omitted from the Storrs’ version
are newly translated and restored to the work by Ruth Martin.
Series No. 004 Jean Paul was the nom-de-plume of Johann Paul F. Richter (March
Title The Life of the Merry Little School- 21, 1763–Nov. 14, 1825), a German writer of long novels noted for their
master Maria Wutz in Auenthal digression, warmth, and humor. After several early satirical works (at
the “vinegar-factory”, he would say), he hit a stride in the 1790s with The
Author Jean Paul
Invisible Lodge (1793), Hesperus, or 45 Dog-Post Days (1795), Flower,
Retail $10.00
Fruit, and Thorn Pieces (1797), Titan (1803), and Walt and Vult (1805).
Pages 72 Jean Paul
ISBN 978-1-955190-03-9
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
16 17She was brought up by her
mother. She had meaning and
she was careful in reading. She
read marvelously. She was pleased.
She was aged thirty-nine. She
was flavored by reason of much
memory and recollection.
Written in 1915 and serialized in The Broom in 1922, “If You Had Three
Husbands” is an incantatory prose poem concerned with triangulating
a description of newly arisen modes of production, and in particular
self-production, between avant-garde art, popular media, and the
still-dominant domestic sphere, the latter of which, one may come to
find, is as dramatic a realm for roiling cultural change as any.
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was perhaps the
figurehead of modernist literature, an American writer and poet who
settled in Paris in 1903, hosting the revolving-door salon which counted
among its visitors Picasso, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Matisse. She
Series No. 005 was a prolific writer with a tangled publication history. Some of her bet-
Title If You Had Three Husbands ter-known works include The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933),
Tender Buttons (1912), and Fernhurst (1904).
Author Gertrude Stein
Retail $8.00
Pages 30
ISBN 978-1-955190-04-6 Gertrude Stein
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
18 19Now is the Sunne withdrawne into
his Bed-chamber, the Windowes of
Heaven are shut up, and silence with
darknesse have made a walke over the
whole Earth, and Time is tasked to
worke upon the worst Actions . . . . .
First published in London in 1626, Fantasticks is a pithy shepherd’s
calendar, relating the customs and natural history through the seasons
and the hours of the day. Published in Breton’s last year and serving for
a “perpetuall prognostication”, here is a work that reflects the knowl-
edge of a lifetime. To quote Alexander B. Grosart, who edited Breton’s
complete works in 1879: to experience Fantasticks is to be “carried
captive away back to ‘Merry England’ of the ‘Olden Time’ […]. Carry
it to the greenwood with you, Reader, and if thou art not charmed, I
dub thee—soulless.” This old spelling edition has been established in
consultation with the digital facsimile of the 1626 edition and contains
typographical ornaments modeled on those appearing in it.
Nicholas Breton was the second son of the London merchant William
Breton, and a stepson to the poet George Gascoigne. He was a prolific
Series No. 006
writer of prose and verse, with publications appearing at regular inter-
Title Fantasticks vals from 1577 up until the time of his death. His poetic works include:
Author Nicholas Breton A Floorish Upon Fancie; The Toyes of an Idle Head; Melancholike
Retail $8.00 Humours; Ravisht Soule and Blessed Weeper; A True Description of
Pages 48 Unthankfulnesse; and I Would, and Would Not. His prose works in-
clude: A Mad World my Masters; Wonders Worth the Hearing; A Poste
ISBN 978-1-955190-08-4
with a Packet of Mad Letters; I Pray You Be Not Angrie; A Murmurer;
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
The Good and the Badde; Strange Newes Out of Divers Countries; and
Fantasticks.
20 21People’s biographies don’t always begin in
childhood. In some cases, biography begins
in senility, in adulthood, or at twenty. In
Russia, many people’s biographies began on
October 25 (in the old style) in the year 1917.
The biography of Ivan Petrovich Moscow
began October 25, when he climbed to
biography by way of the ruins of history.
An explosive narrative from the Russian master of modernity Boris
Pilnyak. Pilnyak had lived directly the momentous changes of the
Russian Revolution of 1917, and in Ivan Moscow he channeled the
sense of danger and upheaval into a novel where the next direction
can never be predicted. Shuttling back and forth in time, the difficult-
to-summarize story involves a factory situated deep in the Poludov
Mountains, syphilitic delirium, and a radioactive Egyptian mummy.
The narrative conveys the shock of Russian modernity circa 1920 in
riotously entertaining fashion. Our text is a revised version of
A. Schwartzman’s translation of the book (Boston: Christopher
Publishing House, 1935).
Boris Andreievich Vogau (Oct. 11 1894—April 21 1938), known
Series No. 007
to readers as Boris Pilnyak, was a Russian writer of novels and short
Title Ivan Moscow stories. Following the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and
Author Boris Pilnyak the ensuing civil war, he rose to prominence with the success of his
Publication July 13, 2021 novel The Naked Year (1921), which gave narrative form to the wide-
Retail $10.00 spread upheaval. For the next decade he enjoyed a position of relative
fame and success, travelled abroad, and published travelogues of his
Pages 100 Boris Pilnyak
experiences. Increasingly, he was subject to ideological pressure from
ISBN 978-1-955190-10-7
Soviet officials and fellow writers. He was arrested in October 1937 and
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” executed the following year.
22 23Familiar things be ever seen as new.
Then all your seeking shall be well repaid,
and what lies to your hand was meant for you.
You’ll find, if but your arrogance be stayed,
the recondite grow paltry to your view,
and simple things remote and unassayed.
The writer, publisher, pamphleteer, and satirist Karl Kraus is perhaps
best remembered as the ultimate thorn-in-the-side of warmongers,
yellow newspapermen, and political scoundrels of all stripes in the
German-speaking world of the early 20th century. This substantial
selection of his poetry is translated and introduced by Albert Bloch, the
artist and lone American associate of Der Blaue Reiter.
Poems by Karl Kraus was originally published in 1930 by the Four Seas
Company of Boston, featuring both lyric and dramatic verse, as well as
pithy, incisive poems that carried his signature critical bite in the pages
of Die Fackel.
Series No. 008
Karl Kraus (April 28, 1874–June 12, 1935) was a Jewish-Austrian
Title Poems satirist, essayist, poet, playwright, and journalist, “the master of
Author Karl Kraus venomous ridicule,” in the words of Stefan Zweig.
Retail $12.00
Pages 164
ISBN 978-1-955190-12-1 Karl Kraus
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
24 25I want to tell an amusing story, and yet begin
at a grave. It is cynical, but I hope that, after
a few words of explanation, even tender souls
will forgive me.
A weird tale of sleight-of-hand, of resurrection, of time travel, from the
late 19th century. Newton’s Brain by Jakub Arbes, translated from the
Czech by Josef Jiří Král, is an example of what the author called a “ro-
manetto”, a very brief novel, often with fantastic elements. Published in
English in Poet Lore in 1892, the book tells the story of a young man of
science, whose beliefs are tested when his childhood friend shows up
unexpectedly—unexpected, because he had died when a sabre split
his skull in two during the Austro-Prussian War some months earlier.
Convinced that his friend is playing some kind of elaborate ruse, he
accepts his invitation to a secretive lecture, at which his friend—who
claims to have had his own damaged brain replaced with that of Isaac
Newton—promises to reveal everything.
Jakub Arbes (June 12, 1840-April 8, 1914) was a Czech writer. A dis-
ciple of Jan Neruda, Arbes would carve out his own niche in the rapidly
changing world of European letters, creating the form he called the
romanetto, brief, proto-detective novels often with Gothic elements, in-
fluenced strongly by Edgar Allan Poe. An opponent of the Austro-Hun-
garian Empire and publisher of political magazines, Arbes would spend
Series No. 009 15 months in prison, leaving Prague shortly thereafter to join other
Title Newton’s Brain ex-pats in France.
Author Jakub Arbes
Retail $10.00
Pages 108
ISBN 978-1-955190-13-8 Jakub Arbes
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
26 27O dissemblyng heart, that under a pretence to
be clere and loyall, maketh men to judge that
hypocrisy is devocion, ambicion nobilitie,
avarice husbandrye, crueltie zele of justice,
muche bablyng eloquence, folishenes gravitie,
and dissolucion diligence . . . . .
Sir Francis Bryan’s translation of Antonio de Guevara’s Menosprecio de
corte y alabanza de aldea (1539) was first printed in England in 1548.
Presented in old spelling, A Looking Glasse for the Court is a satirical
treatise in the contemptus mundi vein exhorting the reader to quit the
court & live in the country. Although Guevara has not been published
in English in over a century, during the sixteenth century his prose
was among the most read in all of Europe, translated into every major
language. In this volume one finds a convergence of the medieval &
courtly literary traditions, with a heady infusion of classical erudition
(sometimes spurious, of Guevara’s own invention).Guevara’s prologue,
which appears in the original 1539 edition, has been newly translated
& restored by Jessica Sequeira. Afterword and critical bibliography by
Jacob Siefring, Empyrean series editor.
Antonio de Guevara was born around 1480, likely in the Cantabrian
village of Treceño. In 1492, Guevara went to the royal court, where he
would be for roughly the next two decades. In 1506, he joined the Fran-
Series No. 010
ciscan Order. In 1523, he was appointed to serve as a preacher in the
Title A Looking Glasse for the Court royal chapel, the first of several positions to which the Holy Roman Em-
Author Antonio de Guevara perer Charles V appointed him. In 1528, Libro áureo de Marco Aurelia
Retail $11.00 emperador y elocuentísimo orador was published (translated in 1534 by
Pages 150 Lord Berners into English as The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius Em-
perour). This book, later be reissued in an expanded and revised form,
ISBN 978-1-955190-14-5 Antonio de Guevara was eventually published in every major European language. In 1529,
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
the Emperor appointed him Bishop of Guadix and in 1537, Bishop of
Mondoñedo. He died on Good Friday in 1545.
28 29The verses will not stay fixed in her brain. They
seem to stay hovering in the air, by enchantment,
confused with the warmth of the sun, the perfume
of the acacias, the happy buzzing of the bees. She
imagines a beautiful thing that smiles upon her.
No poet has written these verses. They sprang
into being miraculously of themselves, in the souls
and on the lips of mankind, on a morning in May.
They are like the air, they are an element, one can
sink oneself in them.
First published in 1921, Stella mattutina is Ada Negri’s bildungsroman,
based partly on the circumstances of her own life as the daughter of a
single-mother working in a factory. With a poet’s sensitivity, the adult
narrator looks back on her slow awakening to the vicissitudes of life and
the imagination in late nineteenth-century Italy.
Ada Negri (February 3, 1870-January 11, 1945) was born in Lodi,
near Milan, to poor parents. After completing her schooling she took a
position as a schoolteacher in 1888 in the village of Motta-Visconti. The
Series No. 011 publication of her first poetry collection Fatalita (1892) brought recogni-
Title Morning Star tion to Negri as a poet of socialist tendencies and exceptional gifts. She
Author Anne Day continued to write and publish for the rest of her adult life, both poetry
Retail $14.00 and imaginative prose. These works notably include Tempeste (1896),
Maternita (1904), Esilio (1914), Il libro di Mara (1919), Finestre alte
Pages 114
(1923), I canti dell’isola (1925), and Il dono (1936). She died in Milan at
ISBN 978-1-955190-22-0 Ada Negri the age of seventy-four.
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
30 31To live long, is it not to bee long troubled? But
number thy Yeares, which are now ( ) and
thou shalt find, that where as ten have overlived
Thee, thousands have not attained this age. One
yeare is sufficient to behold all the magnificence
of Nature, nay, even one day and night; for more,
is but the same brought againe: This Sunne, that
Moone, these Starres, the varying Dance of the
Spring, Summer, Autumne, Winter, is that verie
same which the golden Age did see.
First published in 1623, A Cypresse Grove was reputedly composed by
its author Drummond of Hawthornden during a time of severe bodily ill-
ness. A wellspring of baroque eloquence, it records Drummond’s effort
to reconcile himself to the inevitability of death and find consolation in
the unchanging and eternal. After Breton’s Fantasticks and Guevara’s
A Looking Glasse for the Court, it is the third early modern title in the
Empyrean series presented in the old spelling.
William Drummond (December 13, 1585-December, 4 1649) was
born at Hawthornden Castle, situated on the River Esk, ten miles south
Series No. 012 of Edinburgh. After earning a master’s degree at Edinburgh University,
Title A Cypresse Grove he studied law and travelled on the continent. In 1610 he became Laird
Author William Drummond of Hawthornden of Hawthornden upon the death of his father. He read extensively in
Retail $12.00 several languages and began to publish volumes of verse in a devo-
tional and epic vein. In 1632 he married Elizabeth Logan, by whom he
Pages 56
had five sons and four daughters. In later life he frequently took part in
ISBN 978-1-955190-23-7
William Drummond the political controversies of his day. His works include Teares on the
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” Death of Meliades (1613), Flowres of Sion (1623), and The History of
Scotland, from the year 1423 until the year 1542 (1655).
32 33Priestless hermitage of Castille,
On thee no banners wave;
Unblazon’d gate, thy pointed vaults
No more their weight can save:
Thou hast no soldier on thy heights,
No echo in thy halls,
And rank weeds festering grow uncheck’d
Beneath thy mouldering walls.
Zorrilla, The Poet offers a survey of one of the most popular literary
figures of 19th century Spain, bringing together the entirety of Samuel
Eliot’s 1846 volume of translations and biographical sketch and closing
with another essay, “A Spanish Poet-Laureate” by Fanny Hale Gardiner.
“Zorrilla is a fanciful poet. His mission will not fail for want of freshness or
abundance. His imagination is tropical, growing in wild fantastic forms,
and in him all the orientalism of Spain finds full expression. He fairly
reels, at times, in what the French would call une ivresse poétique. [...]
He writes, as a musician would compose, in harmony that wins the ear
and the heart.” —Samuel Eliot
José Zorrilla y Moral (February 21, 1817-January 23, 1893) was a
Series No. 013
Spanish playwright and poet. After a Jesuit education and some time
Title Zorrilla, The Poet
studying law, he became known as a writer when he delivered a moving
Author José Zorrilla elegiac poem at the funeral of the writer Larra in 1837. From 1839 until
Retail $10.00 1846, Zorrilla wrote two dozen plays and enjoyed the greatest success
Pages 90 of his career. These plays, such as Don Juan Tenorio, his most of-
ten-performed play, he based on Spanish national legends, combining
ISBN 978-1-955190-24-4
José Zorrilla epic, romantic, and fantastic qualities. In 1847 he left Spain, spending
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
some years in France before emigrating to Latin America. In 1866 he
returned to Spain where he continued to write. He died in Madrid at the
age of seventy-five.
34 35Were I to leave in your soul a vague tremolo
like that which comes down from the ancient tower,
that calls us to prayer, I should leave with you
all of my soul.
I make an end now and do you go on;
if I wiped your spirit clean of ideas
for reward I give to myself these stanzas
so without meaning.
First published in 1952, Poems brings together exemplary selections
of Unamuno’s verse from his earliest collection, Poesias, through the
posthumously published Cancionero. Translated by Eleanor Turnbull.
“For quite some time now, my spirit has dwelled in the passionate
intimacy of his verses. I believe that having taken them into my
knowledge and consciousness with reciprocity, savoring them with
hardworking silence, has given me the right to pass judgment on them
today, in clear view of those patient ones who wish to approach the
notations with closer attention.” — Jorge Luis Borges
Series No. 014 Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (Sep. 29 1864–Dec. 31 1936) was
Title Poems a Spanish writer and professor. Prolific in many genres, including
Author Miguel de Unamuno poetry, essays, and drama, he is perhaps best remembered for his
philosophical treatise The Tragic Sense of Life (1912). His novels include
Retail $12.00
Paz en la guerra (Peace in War) (1897), Niebla (Mist) (1914), Vida de
Pages 138
Don Quijote y Sancho (1914), and Abel Sánchez (1917).
ISBN 978-1-955190-25-1 Boris Pilnyak
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” Miguel de Unamuno
36 37The escarpments which slope down from the vast
tableland of La Armuña to the banks of the Tormes
are like the buttresses of a gigantic cathedral; they
are architectonic. There are villages which seem as
if they were sculptured out of the earth of the bleak
upland plains, out of the rock itself. And if you look
long enough at some dark poplar standing near the
spire of a village church, you begin to wonder which
is the tree and which the spire. And the skeleton
trees, all swart naked bone, look like the pillars
of a ruined temple the roof of which has fallen in.
In traveling through this barren rocky Iberian
land, have you never sometimes fancied that you
discerned in some distant craggy hill the outline
of a Baroque cathedral?
Essays, Paradoxes, Soliloquies is a new selection of Unamuno’s essays
from across two previously published collections, 1925’s Essays and
Soliloquies, translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch, and 1945’s Perplexities
and Paradoxes, translated by Stuart Gross. Here Unamuno forcefully
and eloquently expresses his beliefs about religion, ethics, philosophy,
and Spanish literature.
Series No. 015
Title Essays, Paradoxes Soliloquies “What remain today are the argumentative Essays, perhaps the most
Author Miguel de Unamuno living and enduring of all he wrote[.]” — Jorge Luis Borges
Retail $16.00
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (Sep. 29 1864–Dec. 31 1936) was
Pages 276
a Spanish writer and professor. Prolific in many genres, including
ISBN 978-1-955190-26-8 poetry, essays, and drama, he is perhaps best remembered for his
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” philosophical treatise The Tragic Sense of Life (1912). His novels include
Miguel de Unamuno Paz en la guerra (Peace in War) (1897), Niebla (Mist) (1914), Vida de
Don Quijote y Sancho (1914), and Abel Sánchez (1917).
38 39She traversed with heroic serenity these districts,
either desert, or infested with soldiers. Her com
panions regretted having set out with her, some of
them thinking that she might be perhaps a witch;
and they felt a strong desire to abandon her. For
herself, she was so tranquil, that she would stop at
every town to hear mass. “Fear nothing,” she said,
“God guides me my way; ’tis for this I was born.”
Jules Michelet, trans. G. H. Smith
In 1847, Thomas De Quincey took to the pages of Tait’s Magazine to
sarcastically contest Jules Michelet’s telling of the saga of Joan of
Arc in his History of France. Michelet’s chronicle and De Quincey’s
polemic, both reproduced here in full, encapsulate not just the
astonishing chronicle of Joan of Arc’s rise, trial, and passion, but also
the acrimonious nature of historiographic, nationalist debate. Along the
way, the reader will encounter the historians’ mania for footnotes, and
also, in brief cameos, such figures as “Sir John Falstoff” and “Gilles de
Retz”.
Series No. 016
Jules Michelet (21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a prolific
Title Joan of Arc French historian. In addition to his history of France which fills many
Author Jules Michelet, Thomas De Quincey volumes, he wrote books on insects, birds, landscape, and witchcraft.
Publication March 22, 2022
Retail $14.00 Thomas De Quincey (15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was a
translator and essayist. He was the author of works of literary criticism,
Pages 190 Jules Michelet biographical studies, historical essays, translations from German, and a
ISBN 978-1-955190-35-0
much-lauded memoir, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
40 41There was laughter—sure, only among men,
because the jackass is not allowed to laugh, and
if he would laugh, the people would laugh at him,
asking: What’s the jackass laughing about?
In Pages from the Diary of a Jackass (1925), a faithful beast of burden
belonging to a drunkard farmer recounts the hapless adventures of
his master, one of the inhabitants of a backwater town thrown into
chaos by the arrival of a new deacon. Facing change and the loss of
reputation, the farmer increasingly mistreats his jackass, who begins
to question why he continues working for such a master. A political
fable reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Dukić’s novella is a playful
but moralistic work poking fun at religious and philosophical ideals.
The English translation was made in 1931 by Vincent Ujčić, pen name
Vincent Georges, for the Progress Press of New York City in 1931.
Ante Dukić (18 October 1867 - 8 December 1952) was a Croatian
writer whose literary work includes short stories and lyrical poetry.
After finishing teacher’s school in Koper, he worked as an educator,
composer, writer of textbooks, and choir director. His works have been
translated into Russian, Italian, Slovakian, Hungarian, and Czech. He
died in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.
Series No. 017
Title Pages from the Diary of a Jackass
Author Ante Dukić
Publication March 22, 2022
Retail $12.00
Pages 100
Ante Dukić
ISBN 978-1-955190-27-5
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
42 43It has often been a source of much annoyance to
me that to every preface I write I am obliged to
append a book—like the endorsement on a bill
of exchange—or an appendix to letters A to Z.
Many a man who dabbles in authorship by way
of amusement has his books sent to him all ready
written and complete, straight from the cradle; so
that all he has to do is to attach his gold frontlets
of prefaces to their foreheads—which is nothing
but painting the corona about the sun. As yet,
however, not a single author has applied to me for
a preamble to a book, although for several years
I have had a considerable number of prefaces
by me (all ready beforehand, and going at great
bargains), in which I extol to the best of my ability
works which have not as yet come in to being.
Jean Paul, Siebenkäs, tr. A. Ewing
An original collection of twenty-three prefaces spanning the entire
career of Jean Paul, the great German master of metaphors. The all-
Series No. 018
star team of translators includes David Dollenmayer, Genese Grill, Ellen
Title Prefaces Yutzy Glebe, Noah Harley, Daniel Kennedy, Ruth Martin, and Matthew
Author Jean Paul Spencer, as well as Thomas Carlyle and Charles T. Brooks.
Publication May 7, 2022
Retail $16.50 Jean Paul was the nom-de-plume of Johann Paul F. Richter (March
21, 1763–Nov. 14, 1825), a German writer of long novels noted for their
Pages 240
Jean Paul digression, warmth, and humor. After several early satirical works (at
ISBN 978-1-955190-30-5
the “vinegar-factory”, he would say), he hit a stride in the 1790s with The
Dimensions 4.5” x 7” Invisible Lodge (1793), Hesperus (1795), Siebenkäs (1797), and Titan
(1803).
44 45How the moon triumphs through the endless nights!
How the stars throb and glitter as they wheel
Their thick processions of supernal lights
Around the blue vault obdurate as steel!
And men regard with passionate awe and yearning
The mighty marching and the golden burning,
And think the heavens respond to what they feel.
The City of Dreadful Night and Other Writings combines Thomson’s
brief verse masterpiece with a judicious selection of his short verse,
belletristic prose, and his translations of Leopardi and Heine. Included
are the harrowing poem “Insomnia” completed in Thomson’s final year;
his wryly comic pieces like “Bumble, Bumbledom, Bumbleism” and
“A Word on Blasphemy”; and his cogent expressions of theological
despair. Here is an unheralded voice of a Victorian generation, which
came of age with the publicization of Darwin’s findings, and saw
humanity definitively condemned to a godless globe.
James Thomson, pen name “B. V.” (23 November 1834 – 3 June
1882) was a Scottish writer of visionary verse and belletristic prose,
and a translator from German and Italian. After some years as a military
schoolteacher, while living in London in the 1860s and 70s he earned a
Series No. 019
living as a journalist. His long poem The City of Dreadful Night was seri-
Title The City of Dreadful Night
alized in National Reformer in 1874 before its republication in book form
and Other Writings
in 1880. Several prose volumes collect his satirical, belletristic, and
Author James Thomson
critical writings. These include Essays and Phantasies (1881) and Satires
Publication May 7, 2022 and Profanities (1884). Posthumously, a volume of his translations of
Retail $14.50 Leopardi was edited and published by his friend, the literary scholar
James Thomson and editor Bertram Dobell.
Pages 200
ISBN 978-1-955190-31-2
Dimensions 4.5” x 7”
46 47I am part of all that I have seen:
White mornings, starred noons, and sleeping seasons
Broidered with silver and crimson, and lean
Long winter days with mocking blinded suns
Gone dead with cloud shadow, when the first snow
Fell like a thin white veil upon the earth
from “Element” (1928)
One of the great enigmatic figures of twentieth-century American
poetry, Kathleen Tankersley Young published widely for a period of
seven years before her tragic death in 1933, just shy of her thirtieth
birthday. This volume offers the first comprehensive volume of her
poetry and short prose, including all three of the books published
during her lifetime (Ten Poems, The Dark Land, The Pepper Trees),
the near entirety of her published works, recovered from magazines
large and small, and also a selection of nearly forty previously unpub
lished works. Edited by Erik La Prade and Joshua Rothes, this volume
seeks to reintroduce Young as an indispensable poet of mid-period
American modernism.
Kathleen Tankersley Young (1903– 9 April 1933) was an American
Series No. 020
poet and editor. Born in rural west Texas, she spent her adult life be
Title Collected Works
tween Texas, Denver, and New York. She served as an editor for The
Author Kathleen Tankersley Young Echo, Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms, and the Modern Editions
Publication April 30, 2022 Press. Young published three brief books during her brief career. She
Retail $18.00 died under mysterious circumstances in Torreón, Mexico in 1933.
Pages 264, w/ 10 color plates
Kathleen Tankersley
ISBN 978-1-955190-32-9 Young
Dimensions 5.5” x 8.5”
48 49Other forthcoming titles
“The languor of long vigils spent in feverish “The snowstorm was raging outside—the storm
reverie—when people try to pity themselves, which told Olga the story of little Grandchild
quite beyond reason, as they will never pity any snow-flake. It must indeed have been a witch’s
other living soul!—prompted a deep searching spell. It was almost impossible to move about
into the nature of pain & the brevity of our joys, that night. The wind swept down from the roofs,
striking a balance between earthly happiness made somersaults, whirled in a fury, blew from
and unhappiness. Tearful sonnets on sunsets the devastated fields. The snow was heaving
and on the sadness of autumn gave way to a firm like a sea-wave. Instead of walking one was al-
determination to cry out publicly and rationally most forced to crawl through the snowy dimness,
against a sheep-like acceptance of life. the shrieking, groaning, howling whirlwind,
At that time the perennial foolish question the white obscurity, the deadly white song.”
propounded itself to me in the same terms and At the Doors & Other Stories / Boris Pilnyak, tr. various
in the same way it has recurred in all ages to all Late 2022
souls weary of the world: Is life worth living?”
The Failure / Giovanni Papini, tr. Virginia Pope “Wanted, by the undersigned, a wife, endowed
Summer 2022
with all the virtues he has lost—she must be an
“In the many brief hours which you made me angel in the present life until she becomes one in
spend at your side, you often spoke of your faith the next—must bear with every thing, even with
in free and sincere art; and I received the courage a man or with his wh—e—must hide from her
of my Truth and pride in my Ideal not from myself husband nothing but her tears and her children.
but from your experience. Allow me now to offer Beelzebub”
you this book which came to me from you.” Biographical Recreations Under the Cranium of a Giantess /
Jean Paul, tr. Anonymous & Genese Grill
Hallucinated City / by Mário de Andrade, tr. Jack E. Tomlins Late 2022
Summer 2022
51“But of all the novelties that excite my own inter- “The shelves of years are like the shelves of
est in the expanding astronomy of recent times, books. The shelves of human years are like
the most promising are those charming little py- books, for every book is surely a human convul-
rotechnic planetoids that variegate our annual sion of human genius, of human thought break-
course. It always struck me as disgusting that, ing the law of death, striding across death, even
in going round the sun, we must be passing con- like the convulsions in a crematory.”
tinually over old roads, and yet have no means The Volga Flows Into the Caspian Sea / Boris Pilnyak, translated
of establishing an acquaintance with them: by Charles Malamuth, Late 2022
they might as well be new for every trip.”
System of the Heavens as Revealed
By Lord Rosse’s Telescopes / Thomas De Quincey “It was Terme-time in hel ( for you must under-
stand, a Lawyer lives there aswell as heere:)
“His poems will not be constructed, they cannot by which meanes don Lucifer (being the justice
be. He is wide open! He is black, speckled with for that Countie, where the Brimstone mines
flashes. But he is wide, wide, WIDE open. He is are) had better dooings and more rapping at
out of doors. He does not look through a window.” his gates, then all the Doctors & Empericall
William Carlos Williams Quack-salvers of ten citties have at theirs in
The Complete Works of Emanuel Carnevali a great plague-time.”
Late 2022
The belman of London and Lanthorne and Candle-light
/ Thomas Dekker
“Once I had seen Carnevali, it became an
obsession with me, the compiling of this book.
The words of it were now the only speech left
to him to exchange with the men of his time
and kind[.]” Kay Boyle
The Autobiography of Emanuel Carnevali / Ed. Kay Boyle
Late 2022You can also read
