Collecting
The Obelisk Press
The reference books you need to have!
Memoirs of a Booklegger
by Jack Kahane
The book that started it all, this is a must have for every
Jack Kahane/Obelisk Press collector. Kahane’s autobiography, Memoirs of a
Booklegger, recounts the life of the colorful and eccentric man who started
the Obelisk Press in Paris in 1931.
From his insecure boyhood days in Manchester, England to his successful
years in the Manchester textile industry; from his enlistment in the British
Army to his being seriously wounded in the trenches of France; from his early
days as an expatriate novelist in 1920’s Paris to his becoming a confidante,
publisher, and friend to some of the best literary minds of all time; Kahane tells his story with a mix of drama,
comedy, cynicism, and tenderness. His
many and varied opinions of women, sex, war, writers, publishers, Germans,
French, Italians, Americans, and English are often times insightful and many
times infuriating. Kahane died on
September 3, 1939, just months after Memoirs of a Booklegger was
published and two days after the beginning of World War II.
Memoirs of a Booklegger was originally published in a limited quantity in 1939 by Michael Joseph. Copies are rare, and if found, are very expensive. The book was re-issued by the handsack press in a new edition in 2006. This edition contains the text from the original 1939 edition including the very useful index. This handsack press printing is also the first to contain an Introductory Foreword written by Jack Kahane’s granddaughter, Juliette Kahane. The book is available through the handsack press (click here for description and ordering information).
The Frog Prince
by
Maurice Girodias
Like Memoirs, this is a must have for the Jack Kahane/Obelisk Press Collector. This autobiography by Jack Kahane’s son, Maurice Girodias, contains many interesting anecdotes about Jack Kahane and the early days of the Obelisk Press. Published in 1980 by Crown Publishing of New York, this book is out of print. However used copies are readily available at reasonable prices.
Checklist of the Publications
of Henry Babou and Jack Kahane and of the Obelisk Press
by James Armstrong
In 1995, the Bibliographical Society of London granted
₤350 to a gentleman by the name of James Armstrong to perform a study of
the Obelisk Press. When completed in
1999 this study gave us Mr. Armstrong’s landmark descriptive bibliography of
the Obelisk Press. It is this
bibliography upon which all subsequent studies of the Obelisk Press have been
based. The bibliography was published
in London in the Spring 2002 edition of The Book Collector, Volume 51, No.
1. Copies of this are hard to find,
but Armstrong’s descriptive bibliography was republished in Of Obelisks and
Daffodils.
Of
Obelisks and Daffodils
by James Armstrong and Gary Miers
James Armstrong’s ground breaking Obelisk Press descriptive bibliography was re-issued in Of Obelisks and Daffodils in 2003. Of Obelisks and Daffodils was the first book to bring Memoirs of a Booklegger (the chapters dedicated to the Obelisk Press) together with a Jack Kahane biography and a complete bibliography of Kahane authored books. Edited and with a foreword by Gary Miers, this book is available in an updated edition through the handsack press (click here for description and ordering information).
Obelisk – A History of Jack
Kahane and the Obelisk Press
by Neil Pearson
Neil Pearson’s book takes a step beyond James Armstrong’s work. Pearson not only includes the First Edition / First Printing bibliography of the Obelisk Press, he also includes a bibliography of subsequent printings of the Obelisk catalog. Pearson also supplies biographies of all the Obelisk Press authors. The book was released in the UK in October 2007 and in the US in February of 2008 by Liverpool University Press. Copies are available through Amazon.com and major bookstores.