I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Absurdities
London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1934. Item #05464
"The more serious the business undertaking, the funnier his drawings became"
ROBINSON, W. Heath. Absurdities. A Book of Collected Drawings. London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., [1934].
First Edition. Folio (12 1/4 x 9 7/8 inches; 311 x 251 mm.). [i]-vi, 7-95, [96] pp. Ninety full-page drawings and six vignettes.
Publisher's white paper boards, front cover pictorially printed in black and green, spine printed in black. Apart from the slightest rubbing to the extremities this is the finest copy that we have seen in over fifty years.
"The more serious the business undertaking, the funnier his drawings became." (John Lewis. Heath Robinson. Artist and Comic Genius, p. 181.
William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was an English cartoonist and illustrator best known for drawings of ridiculously complicated machines for achieving simple objectives. His brothers, Thomas Heath Robinson and Charles Robinson were also artists.
In the United Kingdom, the term "Heath Robinson" entered the language during the 1914–1918 First World War as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance, much as "Rube Goldberg machines" came to be used in the United States from the 1930s onwards as a term for similar efforts. The term "Heath Robinson contraption" is perhaps more often used in relation to temporary fixes using ingenuity and whatever is to hand, often string and tape, or unlikely cannibalizations. Its continuing popularity was undoubtedly linked to Second World War Britain's shortages and the need to "make do and mend".
Lewis, pp. 153, 162, 181-182.
Price: $850.00