Into the Archive: A Comedy of Injustice

I suppose this one is really on me: on my greed, my folly, and my haste. This will make the fourth copy of Jurgen I have bought.

The first was the terrible paperback by a publisher that thought of it as an erotic classic; the second was a cheap Dover reprint (though it came with all of Frank C. Pape’s illustrations); and then there was the rather plain volume from the Storisende edition. I came across this copy on eBay while I was researching prices for Cabell books, and it caught my attention. Fifty dollars? That was much cheaper than the $100 that it had been going for. Illustrated? Who could that be by, other than the great Frank C. Pape himself?

Well, it could be by Ray F. Coyle, that’s who, and if I had slowed down a bit and done a little more research I might have realized it. Ray Coyle was a short-lived (1885 – 1924) artist whose work in pen and ink has been compared to Aubrey Beardsley. Not a style I’m particularly fond of. Only when I have one of those black hardcovers by McBride with pictures by Frank C. Pape can I finally stop buying Jurgen.

The Real McCoy (Not McCoyle)

It’s not like it’s even my favorite Cabell (that would be The Silver Stallion), nor do I reread it often. Although it might be Cabell’s most famous book, its reputation is, indeed, a little embarrassing.

Also arriving today was the copy of The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis that I had been considering. A little battered, but inexpensive and serviceable; it only needed a little care to make it presentable.

But the gem of the day must be Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. Put together by Terry Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and Gabrielle Kent, an author of juvenile fantasy, and copiously illustrated by Paul Kidby, it’s a beautiful little book in both a slipcase and a book jacket. I’m wondering exactly where it fits on Terry Pratchett’s dictum ‘no more Discworld when I’m gone’; it seems to be a kind of a gathering of everything he wrote about Witches on the Discworld compiled into a sort of a scrapbook, just put together a little more seamlessly into the form of, well, a written guide (rather than a novel or a story) by one of the characters within that world. I imagine there must be some kind of new writing not by Terry to segue everything together. “I could not wish it undone, the issue of it being so proper.” Or at least, proper looking. It’s surprising to realize Terry Pratchett has been gone for almost a decade.