Epilonian Books

Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997

Catalog notes

Description

Charles Scribner's Sons, Published 1936. Hardcover, 416 pp.; 25 cm; 1936 imprint with no later printings noted (but no Scribner "A" mark located on the copyright page); profusely illustrated with black-and-white photographic plates of sculptures and travel scenes; double-page pictorial endpaper map by Ginevra King showing Hoffman's round-the-world tour for the Field Museum.

Condition & notes

In Very Good condition, no dust jacket. Blue-green cloth boards with gilt lettering on front board and spine, gilt rule beneath the title; gilt SCRIBNERS at foot of spine. Mild shelf wear. Binding tight. Pages mildly toned, otherwise unmarked. American sculptor Malvina Hoffman's memoir of the four-year commission (1930-1934) from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago to create more than one hundred bronzes for the museum's Hall of Man exhibition. Hoffman traveled around the world to model her subjects, and the book recounts those journeys alongside her earlier training in Paris under Rodin and her early career in New York. Dedicated to Ignace Jan Paderewski. Contents: The Hall of Man; The Making of a Sculptor (Youth in Forty-third Street, Rodin and Paris, Breaking the Ice in New York, Professional Adventures, Mestrovic, Behind the Scenes in Sculpture); The Study of Races (Hunger in the Balkans, Africa, Europe and the Elusive Alpine, Maharajas in London, Asia Africa and Oceania in Paris); Round the World (Packing with a Vengeance, Hawaii: Sailing Westward to the East, Japan and Hokkaido, China, The Philippines, Bali, Java, Singapore and the Malay Jungles, Burma, India, Ceylon, The Return to Paris); The End of It All (Finistère, If Atlantis Why Not Mu?, My Trocadéro Exhibition, Our Aboriginal Americans, Taos, The Day After, Hic Incipit Vita Nova, "Know Thyself and Thou Shalt Know the Universe"); Appendix of Translations; Index.