#E. A. Robinson

[thefollow-spot]

'Merlin' and 'Lancelot' by Edwin Arlington Robinson

This is the first full book I've typeset and bound that is not fanfiction—which means I finally have something to show off to the normies in my life LMAO!

'Twas a Christmas gift for my lovely Misery (@whoawhataconcept), who has dragged me right after her into a fascination with Arthuriana ❤️

✨ Details below the cut! ✨

🤍 NEW METHODS 🤍

Printing at home: In the past, I've sent my typeset PDFs off to a local print shop to be printed, but with access to a home printer for the first time, I battled the fucking thing to print it entirely at home. I had a lot of trouble getting my printer to do the whole thing (I think it was so long that the printer's memory started giving up), so I eventually ended up sending the PDF to print in smaller signature groups at a time. Due to misprinting, I ended up with many good glue sheets & pages to protect drying boards and such

Leather-core for endbands: I finally splurged and bought some leather jewellery cord to use as the core in my sewn endbands and it was FANTASTIC!

Ribbon bookmark: 🤍🤍🤍

Backed papers: I purchased two large sheets of artisan paper for the endpages and the cover material. Both were too flimsy for my comfort, so on the advice of some folks at @renegadeguild, I backed some cut-down sheets with regular printer paper using a mix of 50/50 PVA and rice paste. I pressed them flat between protective sheets and they came out perfect!

Paste mix: I enjoyed working with the PVA-paste mix so much that I used it for the rest of the project for pretty much all of my gluing :)

Using an actual book press: Not much to say here except that I finally have an actual press and it made everything 100% easier haha!

Cricut stencil: My sister donated her time and cricut to help me title my cover and spine (under the dust jacket). We cut out stencils with cricut's stencil material & with stick-on vinyl (when we ran out of stencil material LOL). The spine turned out lovely but with some bleed; the cover was a bit of a mess since the stencil material started peeling up the fibres of the cover paper (which I had somehow not thought to seal). But live and learn!

🤍 BOOK INTERIOR 🤍

Copy-editing: Done by they lifesaving and gracious @highlynerdy, who saved me from agonizing over if the raw text source I took from had typos or mistakes. Thank you again, Gracie 💛

Typeset: I was inspired by the original typesets from when these poems were first published, updated to my own aesthetic sensibilities (as much as I had patience for)! The main body-text font is 'Lancelot' which seemed the only appropriate font to use for this project <3

Art: (Not pictured) I included some art by Edward Burne-Jones, "The Beguiling of Merlin", and "The Failure of Sir Lancelot"

🤍 EXTERIOR DESIGN 🤍

Cover: I originally wanted to do this book in blue, but when I went to the paper store, I could not find any marbled blue paper that wasn't wildly over-budget, so I ended up doing another red book. I tried to stick to a colour scheme of white-heavy monochrome + red + metallics.

Dust jacket: Much to my dismay, I realized that I've been lucky in the past, with access to a small nonprofit print shop where their ordering process involves emailing them and describing what you need. To print a dust jacket, one needs access to a print service with "large format" printing, and as I've discovered, that usually means an industrial printing service. Sorely missing my usual nonprofit print shop, I ended up going with a custom photo printing service, requesting a large photo print on their thinnest paper. Due to my special instructions, the cover came back almost-perfect. The edges were jagged, and the paper was a bit too thick, but it is perfectly serviceable and I'm overall happy with how it came out.

[eightsdriver]

any withnail and I likers out there <\3

[babysundoll]

Any robot with one eye is peak character design

[petaltexturedskies]

September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.

Rowland E. Robinson

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[neelyowhora]

the fencing scene that was cut from withnail and i, 1986

[eighthwholove]

Paul McGann, behind the scenes of Withnail and I

[spiderlane]

Cursed TMA fancast because i saw someone else do it and i thought it would be funny

Jonathan simms:

Martin blackwood:

Tim stoker:

Sasha James:

Gertrude robinson:

Elias Bouchard:

Daisy Tonner:

Basira hussain:

Melanie King:

Michael:

The ceaseless watcher:

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Bolt (2008, Chris Williams and Byron Howard)

28/05/2024

[noxumboots]

Found some old doodles from 2022-ish and now I can finally share them! Ryler and Bert from the hit game uhhhhh Scrapnautica

[boborock789]

Withnail and I // Dir. Bruce Robinson

[haintxblue]

idk man i read the ea robinson arthuriana poems a couple nights ago

yall know i hate lancelot i dont gotta linger on that ok fuck lancelot i despise the man but i have always had COMPLICATED GUINEVERE FEELINGS and boy does ea robinson *really fucking get it* on that score

"bought" the keyword here is bought

not seduced or charmed or loved or even won but BOUGHT, like property, because that is what you are, as the daughter of a king, you are just some token to be pawned around, some object for the furtherance of men's aims

and this is really the whole allure of courtly love as a myth to me: it's the inversion of power. by day you are property but to one man, even if he is pretending, even if it's a game, you have something like power.

(even her court and her servants are not truly in her power! they are in the king's! they hate and despise her!)

and who are we! are we so fucking arrogant! to condemn her! to condemn a woman who has been treated as property, for falling in love with a man who voluntarily makes himself a slave to her! her infidelity wasn't just for sex or even love! it was for some awful scrap of wretched secret power and agency for the first time in her godforsaken life where she is always perceived as an ideal object! what a fucking relief to command! what a fucking relief even to be cruel!

(this is all the eroticism and the emotionality of courtly love! this is what it is! all the yearning isn't just yearning for a person! of course a woman traded like a coin between kings yearns to have some man yield to her! and not just any man, but a man with power, a man with strength! and of course a man who has everything given to him, who is adored and idolized, who has to constantly epitomize strength and awful power, of course when he bends a knee it feels like buckling to a fucking relief! of course it does! this is why courtly love is just bdsm in a fancy coat! the relief of being cruel to one and of being soft to another! a feast of fucking crumbs to have nothing but the touch of a hand to look forward to when you have nothing else!)

and all those years of fucking guilt that she acted on her own need for agency and it wronged a man she couldn't even yet justifiably hate! because he was not cruel to her! he was kind to her! he loved her, imperfectly and terribly, because he is a man and a king and he does not know any other way to love! and so to choke on your own frantic desperation and pretend that it is gratitude! to feel guilt, when you betray that man!

he finds out - he is so angry that he tries to kill you, not just swiftly, but slowly and painfully. you are going to see the stake in front of you and the flames around you every day for the rest of your life. his actions are so base and cruel that the men he conscripts to guard your execution, men who love him, are disgusted and refuse to even arm themselves, and when your lover comes who has made himself a slave to you he strikes them down where they stand, all this senseless fucking death and bloodshed!

and you! are! relieved!

it is awful but how can she not be relieved? how can you not feel some fucking shred of relief that you have the justification of hatred now! how can you not sink into that disgust and hatred and embrace it!

and then this other man, this man you love, this man that has always been a slave to you, he, in all his more perfect, less unassailable, less qualified guilt - he in his more total sin, in his inexcusable betrayal, with a conscience more tormented than yours can ever be if you are honest to yourself - he looks on all this bloodshed and he is cold, and all he wants is peace, now. he sits in the consequences of all his willful wrongs and he loves you, but he only loves you imperfectly and terribly because that is the only way that a man can

and you, who have always been able to command this man unthinkingly - the only command you have ever had; the only agency and power you have ever had, yielded up to you voluntarily and therefore to be voluntarily removed - look at him growing cold and you throw yourself to your knees and you beg in the way he used to beg you, but it's not a game anymore

and now that you finally have the relief of hating your husband, your lover makes you into property again - sends you back to him again, a coin traded between men - and like a fucking knife, calls it freedom

in a few short years of having power, in some secret thing that was your entire life but was only a game, you had your brief life and now it is over. and what can you say?

you can say nothing. he already said it to you.

jesus christ.

[eightsdriver]

marwoodcore (me too ngl)

[ragazzoarcano]

“Nessuna felicità può essere paragonata alla gioia di trovare un cuore che ci comprende.”

— Victor Robinson

[citizenscreen]

Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and George E. Stone take time out from filming William Keighley's BULLETS OR BALLOTS (1936) to take a picture with Manny Robinson (E. G. Robinson Jr.) #DailyRobinson

[thequietabsolute]