036 - MPM3
A Humument
A Treated Victorian Novel
Tom Phillips
Tetrad Press; London, UK
2013 [1970, 1973]
230mm
367pp
Edition: #4/5
Inscription: Signed by the artist
Notes: Two volumes in divided black slipcase. This is a special presentation of the first version of A Humument. It celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the completed publication by the Tetrad Press of the work's first issue, in parts, in 1973. The pages are here gathered together as the artist originally intended in a single binding comprising two leather bound boxes each featuring an original watercolour (also worked from A Human Document). The bindings are lined with facsimiles of those that ornament two 1896 editions of the novel. Each box also includes the spines of containers within which the Tetrad Press edition was issued. The Tetrad emblem appears in the leather inlay on the back of the second box. The two boxes are housed in a slipcase, the whole fabricated by Bookworks in 2013 to the artist's design. A leaf inserted at the end of the contents includes a brief history of the Tetrad Humument. The above image replaces (with a self-evident adaptation) an insert for the special limited hardback issue of the third Thames & Hudson edition. The first box, bound in green leather, contains loose pages 1-180. Colophon on a card illustrated with a watercolour painting contained in the pink folded card of the 1973 (1970) edition. The second box, bound in purple leather, contains loose pages 181-367, plus the brief history referred to above in a yellow folded cover. Both boxes have a watercolour drawing inset into a window in the front cover which is covered with transparent Mylar. Volume 1 is round and volume 2 is square. A suite of forty additional pages suitable for framing is also included.