The Golden Cockerel Press Collection

From the third Golden Cockerel Press bibliography, Cockalorum.

November, 1947.  ENDYMION.  By John Keats.  (Uniform with Keat's Lamia.)  58 wood engravings by John Buckland-Wright.  152 pp.  12 x 7 ½ ins.  Caslon's Old Face 18 pt. type.  500 numbered copies on hand-made paper.  100 copies in white vellum, price 20 gns.  400 copies in ¼ white vellum, with buckram boards, price 7 gns.

This poem of maintained ecstasy provides almost infinite scope for the illustrator.  Endymion, in his quest for ideal beauty, after wandering through woods and glades, explores the grottoes of the underworld, then the magic depths of the sea, and finally the starry firmament, where he finds the object of his desire in Cynthia, goddess of the moon   In his 58 illustrations, John Buckland-Wright is both as classical and as romantic as the poet could have desired.  His vision, it seems to me, approaches that of Keats as closely as is possible for any artist working in our generation.  While there is more than a hint if classicism in his admirable figures, their groupings and settings are romantic.  In the intricacy of hi detail he seems to follow Kears's advice to Shelley to 'load every rift with ore'.  He constructs his designs on an underlying abstract rhythm.  Begun--to the tune of air-raid sirens--in 1943, this book took over four years to produce.