The two editions published by the Eragny Press bearing the inscription ‘File Copy Not To Be Taken Away’ came from the collection of Antonio Cippico. We can trace their history back a little further.
In 2006, the two editions recently offered by Sophie Schneideman – Flaubert’s La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier (1900) and Un Coeur simple (1901) – were listed on the website of the antiquarian bookshop Maggs Rare Books in London. The third volume of Flaubert’s Hérodias (1901) was not included, but there is indeed a copy bearing that inscription. We know this from an earlier antiquarian bookshop catalogue.
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| The Gentle Art (Zurich: L'Art Ancien S.A., 1974) |
The Gentle Art of Lucien Pissarro was the cover title of a catalogue issued by L'Art Ancien in Zurich: The Gentle Art. A Collection of Books and Wood Engravings by Lucien Pissarro. Compiled by Geoffrey Perkins with the assistance of Heidi Seger, the catalogue listed 47 journal publications, portfolios, single prints, and books. The intention was to sell the collection as a whole, but apparently this did not happen.
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| The Gentle Art (Zurich: L'Art Ancien S.A., 1974) |
A 'Note' in the catalogue mentions:
A few of the following Eragny Press books come from a collection formed in the period 1910-1925 by a close friend of Charles Ricketts. These items were Ricketts's former file copies and still bear a short handwritten notice to that effect on the upper cover. This is denoted by an asterisk before the title.
(p. 26)
These seven books are:
16. Gustave Flaubert, La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier (1900)
17. Les Ballades de Maistre François Villon (1900)
18. Gustave Flaubert, Un Coeur simple (1901)
19. Gustave Flaubert, Hérodias (1901)
20. Autres poésies de Maistre François Villon et son école (1901)
22. Francis Bacon, Of Gardens (1902)
23. Choix de sonnets de P. de Ronsard (1902)
All these have the 'prospectus on front inside cover' and a bookplate, except no. 20 which lacks the bookplate.
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| Bookplate of Antonio Cippico |
The bookplate, of course, is that of Ricketts's Italian friend Antonio Francisco Niccolo Cippico (1877-1935). His books were probably left to his wife Margaret Howard McCallum Webster (c.1879-1953).
Their two sons - Tristram Alvise (1904-1979) and Aldo Marino (1905-1985) - may have sold the books at any date before 1974.
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| The Gentle Art (Zurich: L'Art Ancien S.A., 1974) |
