{"product_id":"phillips-tom-a-humument-volume-i-x-with-two-volumes-of-additional-material","title":"PHILLIPS, Tom. A Humument. Volume I[–X, with two volumes of additional material].","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eA New \u003ci\u003eHypnerotomachia Poliphili\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePHILLIPS, Tom.\u003c\/strong\u003e A Humument. Volume I[–X, with two volumes of additional material]. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Tetrad Press.\u003c\/i\u003e 1970.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwelve volumes, loose in sheets as issued (largely initialled by Phillips in pencil, \u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e), printed by lithography, silkscreen, and letterpress. Each housed in its original coloured card box (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 190.5 x 139.7 mm), vols I–X with publisher’s printed spine label and the stamp (or sticker in the last instance) of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid; comprising ff. [428]; some wear to boxes, spine labels somewhat worn and frayed, boxes for vol. I and ‘misc. Spares’ sunned; contents in fine condition, with occasional light wear; a very well-preserved set; limitation leaflets to vols I–IX numbered in pencil; leaflet to vol. XI inscribed ‘for Andrew Crozier’ by the author.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst limited edition, signed by the artist, one of one hundred sets, of Tom Phillips’s \u003ci\u003eHumument\u003c\/i\u003e (1937–2022), his experimental modification and adaptation – through painting, collage, and cut-outs –  of his copy of the 1892 novel A Human Doc-ument which he had bought for three pence in 1966, from the library of Phillips’s collaborator, the British Revival poet Andrew Crozier.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis so-called ‘treated work’ is the culmination of Phillips’s page-by-page metamorphosis of the text of Mallock’s Victorian novel, excavating its text ‘for new ambiguities of character and situation and new ironies and paradoxes of utterance [...] The version has its own characters who mingle with the protagonists of the original in a non sequential plot-structure within which the elements of music, philosophy, poetry and painting are fused together to make a true \u003ci\u003egesamtkunstwerk\u003c\/i\u003e’ (prospectus). Using techniques suggest-ed by William Burroughs in a 1965 Paris Review article, Phillips used the book to draw out new meanings, commentary and suggestions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf the process of adapting Mallock’s text, Phillips writes: ‘Many rules have grown up in the course of the work. Although Mallock’s original hero (Grenville) and heroine (Irma) have their parts to play, the central figure of this version is Bill Toge (pronounced ‘toe-dj’). His adventures can only (and must) occur on pages which originally contained the words ‘together’ and ‘altogether’ (the only words from which his name can be extracted). He also has his own recurrent iconography; his insignia include a carpet and a window looking out onto a forest and his amoeba-like ever-changing shape is always constructed from the rivers in the type. His story, the \u003ci\u003eProgress of Love\u003c\/i\u003e, is a favourite neo-platonic \u003ci\u003etopos\u003c\/i\u003e and there are deliberate parallels with the \u003ci\u003eHypnerotomachia Polophili\u003c\/i\u003e, the most beautiful of printed books, published in Venice in 1499.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe bibliography of this first edition is complicated so that it is unclear what the exact con-tents of each box should have been; the possibility of confusion is hinted at by Phillips, who refers to having produced over twenty different versions of page 89 alone. As a leaflet for the project (included here in vols I to III) states, each fascicle ‘will consist of a selection of loose pages varying in number and chosen for their appropriateness to the printing medium used for that particular set’. Vols I, II, and IV here also have a sheet specifying the number of leaves and the method of printing, and vol. VI has a tipped-in slip of uncertain origin, where perhaps each box might originally have had one. In addition, every volume has a leaflet acting as a colophon, with volumes I to IX signed by Phillips and (except for vol. III) numbered out of 100 (the numbers mostly varying, and the eleventh volume, \u003cstrong\u003ewhich was evidently a gift of the assorted additional pages, has been signed by Phillips with an inscription to the poet Andrew Crozier.\u003c\/strong\u003e Every page is initialled by Phillips except for those in the eleventh volume, the two coloured examples of page 209, and a third of the ‘misc. spares’ (of which a few are uncoloured, whether or not as intended, and one of which appears to have been overprinted in error). Some of those spares are signed rather than initialled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere should be two parts to volume X; this set comes with an eleventh volume in a red card box without a spine label, holding 54 additional pages otherwise found across half of the regular boxes plus one page not found elsewhere. Excluding that eleventh volume, the set at that point included 309 pages of the book out of 368 (which total includes the end-piece, doubling as a dedication). Two pages appear twice across volumes I to X (although the page 173 in volume VI is different from the page 173 in volume VII) and three pages appear more than once within a box (with the two extra copies of page 209 being different from the third). Added to this initial set is an additional green box, annotated by the artist as ‘misc. spares etc’, which contains all of the remaining pages bar one (page 324) which is provided as a scanned copy).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePhillips was apparently unenthusiastic about the boxes, which he likely bought from a stationer’s, and which were not designed to provide a permanent home for the book. He hoped that people would have their copies bound, as some did, contributing to the rarity of this original presentation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: Presented by the author to the British poet Andrew Crozier (1943–2008), Professor of Prose at the University of Sussex, winner of the 1976 Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize (awarded jointly to Lee Harwood), and co-editor of the highly influential British Revival anthology \u003ci\u003eA Various Art\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt appears Crozier may have acquired the first ten volumes and was gifted the eleventh separately. In 1970 – the same year \u003ci\u003eA Humument\u003c\/i\u003e was published – Crozier’s Ferry Press published \u003ci\u003eIn One Side \u0026amp; Out the Other\u003c\/i\u003e, a volume of poetry by Crozier and John James with wrappers and twenty-one illustrations by Phillips.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eContents\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. I: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s green card box with printed spine label; ff. [10], screenprinted, initialled by the artist in pencil; with contents leaf and limitation statement (bifolium, printed on cream paper, numbered ‘vol. 1’ in pencil), numbered 74\/100 and signed by the artist; spine and upper lid of box sunned, short split at foot of box, some wear to spine label.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. II:\u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s red card box with printed spine label; ff. [20], printed letterpress, initialled by the artist in pencil; with contents leaf and limitation statement (bifolium, printed on mauve paper, numbered ‘vol. 2’ in pencil), numbered 38\/100 and signed by the artist, with an additional two copies of the prospectus (bifolium) for the project loosely inserted; spine of box lightly sunned, slight wear to spine label; ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. III: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s yellow card box with printed spine label; ff. [9], initialled by the artist in pencil; with a copy of the prospectus (bifolium) and limitation statement (bifolium, printed on orange paper, numbered ‘vol. 3’ in pencil) signed by the artist but not numbered; slight discolouration to spine and soiling to box, spine label worn and peeling slightly; ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. IV: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s pale pink card box, printed spine label; ff. [20], initialled by the artist in pencil, printed by offset lithography; with contents leaf (printed on orange pa-per) and limitation statement (bifolium, printed on pale blue paper, numbered 12\/100 and signed by the artist, front cover numbered ‘vol. 4’ in pencil); slight wear to spine label; ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. V: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s pale blue card box, printed spine label; ff. [20], initialled by the artist in pencil; with prospectus (bifolium, numbered ‘vol. 5’ in pencil) numbered 12\/100 and signed by the artist; some spotting to interior of box;  ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. VI: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s white card box, printed spine label; ff. [40], initialled by the artist in pencil; limitation statement (bifolium, printed on yellow-green paper, numbered ‘vol. 6’ in pencil) signed and numbered 27\/100 by the artist with pasted-in (now loosely inserted) typescript note ‘this Volume contains 39 pages’; slight soiling to spine label;  ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. VII: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s cream card box, printed spine label; ff. [50], initialled by the artist in pencil; with limitation statement (bifolium, printed on orange paper, numbered ‘vol. 7’ in pencil) signed and numbered 25\/100 by the artist; slight wear to spine label; ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. VIII: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s cream card box, printed spine label; ff. [49]; with limitation statement (bifolium, printed on pale green paper, front cover numbered ‘vol. 8’ in pencil), signed and numbered 26\/100 by the artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. IX: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s blue card box, printed spine label; ff. [36]; with limitation statement (bifolium, printed on pink paper, front cover numbered ‘vol. 9’ in pencil), signed and numbered 21\/100 by the artist; slight staining to interior and exterior of box, spine label lightly soiled; ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library to in-side of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. X: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s black card box, printed spine label; ff. [61]; with limitation statement (bifolium, printed on pink paper) not numbered or signed by the artist; paper label with ink stamp of the Croydon College of Design and Technology Library adhered to inside of lid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. [XI]: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s red card box; ff. [55]; with limitation statement (bifolium, printed on pink paper) signed and inscribed by the artist ‘for andrew crozier’; very slight sunning to exterior of box, lower edges slightly rubbed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVol. [XII]: \u003c\/strong\u003e in publisher’s green card box, lid lettered ‘numbered A–P | numbered 51\/100’ in pencil, spine lettered ‘misc. Spares etc’ in ink; ff. [58]; with limitation statement (bifolium, printed on coral paper); exterior of box sunned.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125254\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400448287097,"sku":"2125254","price":10000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125254.jpg?v=1780917098","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/phillips-tom-a-humument-volume-i-x-with-two-volumes-of-additional-material","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}