#English Monotype Scotch Roman

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday! 

First published in 1922, My Sister-Life  by Boris Pasternak is here translated by Mark Rudman, Illustrated by Yuri Kuper and published by the Limited Editions Club, New York, 1991. 

Russian poet, Boris Pasternak wrote My Sister-Life in 1917 in the summer after the October Revolution. Pasternak's poems were received with enthusiasm by young intellectuals as “spontaneous outbursts of a genius.”  However, Pasternak did not receive worldwide acclaim until after 1958, when his only novel, Doctor Zhivago, was first published in Europe. Pasternak was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature, but because of an anti-Pasternak campaign by Soviet Russia, and the banning of his book in Russia for being anti-Soviet, acceptance would have appeared traitorous, so he declined the award.

Subsequently, most of his work was translated and widely read in the western world. My Sister-Life is considered to be one of the world’s great love poems.

Russian born British painter, Yuri Kuper’s etchings accompany Pasternak’s poems. The etchings are printed in a grey or graphite ink, which complements the handmade papers. The objects in the etchings seem to form order within a field of texture and tone. Similarly the text takes shape over a soup of letters in the papers. 

The papers used for the text and cover were made by H.M.P Mill in Woodstock Connecticut, to resemble the stock produced in 1920’s Russia. The Cyrillic letters used for inclusions in the paper are from various recycled texts. The text was set in eighteen-point English Monotype Scotch Roman by Dan Carr and Julia Ferrari at Golgonooza Letter Foundry and printed at Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, Massachusetts, in an edition of 250 copies signed by the artist. London graphic designer Michael Anikst designed the edition. Aldo Crommelynck printed the etchings in Paris, on Hahnemuhle paper. 

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-- Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern