Prints

It's Come to This 
 
Patricia Hampl

MIDNIGHT PAPER SALES 2023 In 1982, while wearing the hat of a “small press illustrator” I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to illustrate a long prose poem by Patricia Hampl, who had recently become famous with the publication of her memoir A Romantic Education (Houghton Mifflin, 1981). The resulting book, Resort (Bookslinger Editions, 1982) was pivotal for me, and I began angling for a manuscript from Patricia I might publish myself. It only took 40 years for one to materialize.

 

 

 

It’s Come to This, Patricia Hampl, (Midnight Paper Sales, 2023). A bookend for Resort, Patricia Hampl, (Bookslinger Editions, 1982) which contains drawings by Gaylord Schanilec of a wild rose and a stark sunrise over Lake Superior. It’s Come to This contains color wood engravings by him of a blooming Amaryllis and a panoramic sunset over the riverfront of Saint Paul, along with a cover lithograph drawn on and printed from the stone by Lila Shull. In the text Hampl contemplates her mortality as she walks her dog along the Saint Paul riverfront through that first dark year of the cover pandemic: “…I was immortal, old friend, until quite recently.”

9 x 11 inches. 36 pages. The text was composition-cast in Monotype Menhart designed by Oldrich Menhart in Prague in 1933, and printed on vintage handmade paper at the Velké Losiny mill in the Czech Republic in the mid-20th century. Bound by Matthew Zimmerman at Studio Alcyon. This edition is comprised of 70 signed & numbered copies, with an additional 5 lettered hors commerce. $1,500.