As I scanned the fiction shelves, a Jane Eyre with an interesting spine jumped out at me. But it wasn't just the spine that was interesting. When I pulled it off the shelf, I saw the the cover was printed with an erie engraving of a line of uniformed schools girls, eyes downcast save for one, whom I presume to be the title character herself. It gave me a little thrill to look at, so I flipped through the pages and found similarly dark, sinister-looking engravings depicting different scenes from the book. They are fantastic.
I decided I had to have it. I showed it to Kristian and he wholeheartedly agreed with me. He had been busy too, and handed me a hardback copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray to replace our nondescript paperback version -- also with some interesting illustrations.
The owner remembered us from our Sherlock Holmes score a few weeks back, and when his eyes fell on our finds he exclaimed, "Man, you guys are fast! I just put those out today... " He was particularly chagrined about the Jane Eyre, since, as he informed us, the engraving artist, Fritz Eichenberg, is something special. Watch out, Random Row, we're fast.
We later looked it up on our own and learned that it originally came as a boxed set with Wuthering Heights. So now we're on the lookout for that, too.
Book added: Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Publisher: Random House
Year: 1943
Where obtained: Random Row, Charlottesville, Va.
Price: $10.00
Book added: The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde
Publisher: Illustrated Editions Company
Year: 1931
Where obtained: Random Row, Charlottesville, Va.
Price: $10.00
No comments:
Post a Comment