100th Anniversary Of Hysteria: Surrealism in 1978£6.95pb • Black Swan • No ISBN |
Beautifully produced catalogue from the exhibition organised by the International Surrealist Movement and the Phases Movement. Includes a lot of original art. |
£9.99 |
The collected works of Jacques Vache, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma and Arthur Craven, four writers on the fringes of the Dada movements of 1920s Paris, who all took their own lives. Some of their writing is rather awesome. Includes biographical introductions by the translators, and personal recollections by other Dadaists. |
£5.95 |
Truly beautiful collection of art, cartoons and illustrated poetry from the likes of Franklin Rosemont, Clark Ashton Smith and Philip Lamantia. |
APOLLINAIRE, Guillaume
£4.95 |
Two wildly erotic tales (The Debauched Hospadar aka the Eleven Thousand Virgins and Memoirs of a Young Don Juan- both written in 1907) never before published together in one volume. From the man who coined the term Surrealism. |
Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion£13.95pb• No ISBN • Black Swan • |
The third international anthology. A stunning, lavish, damn huge production, with essays, art, poetry and invective from just about anyone who's anyone. A whole galaxy of stars from Breton, Bataille, Peters and Rosemont, to Marcuse, Malatesta and CLR James. Angry, uncompromising and provocative. Mind blowing perspectives on just about everything. |
ARTMANN, Hans Carl
£9.99 |
The Vienna Group's founder runs riot in a subversive, allusive tale in which the pursuit of the elusive Dr Unspeakable provides the occasion for an entertaining and genre-crushing display of a genuinely wild talent. |
Bataille, Georges
£18.95 |
An incisive study of a subject the author believes from the start has given consistency to a "morality of revolt". |
BAYER, Konrad
£5.5 |
Writings from the late member of The Vienna Group: montage techniques used to liberate language and examine its political dimension. Aggressive, solipsistic, experimental. |
£6.99 |
300 years of German "enthused" writing, from the Romantics and Expressionists to all manner of visionaries and extremists. From Nietzsche to Doblin. Although half the writers in this book are unjustly neglected contemporaries, earlier texts include humour from Karl Marx and Schopenhauer, erotophagic fantasies from Sacher-Masoch and visions of revenge from Held and Jahnn. |
BLOOD, Benjamin Paul
£3.95 |
A unique contribution to poetic thought, from the poet, philosopher, pamphleteer and indefatigable theorist of the Anesthetic Revelation. He died in 1919. |
BRETON, Andre
£8.95 |
The first and perhaps best surrealistic romance ever written, and the book that defined the movement's attitude toward everyday life, Nadja is the account of the author's obsessive and haunting relationship with a girl in Paris. |
BRETON, Andre (with Paul ELUARD)
£5 |
The Surrealists' anti-religious handbook of semi-automatic writing focuses on the recovery of freedom for the self. Informed by Hegelian and Freudian notions of individual (sub/un)consciousness. |
Breton, Andre and Soupalt, Phillippe
£9.95 |
The first English translation of the first Surrealist book, originally published in 1919. David Gascoyne provides a lengthy introduction examining the content of the work and its method of writing. |
CARRINGTON, Leonora
£4.95 |
The unexpurgated original text of a surrealist classic - the author's terrifying adventures "on the other side of the mirror" after being pronounced incurably insane. With the original map, and new collages by Debra Taub. |
CAWS, Mary Ann, KUENZLI, Rudolf & RAABERG, Gwen
£11.25 |
These 16 illustrated essays present an important revision of surrealism by focusing on the works of women surrealists and their strategies to assert positions as creative subjects within a movement that regarded women primarily as an object of masculine desire or fear. |
£4.95 |
Includes a 44 page section on "The Future of Surrealism", with texts by Buhle, Carrington, Ferlinghetti, Garon, Granell, Green, Jablonski, Lamantia, Marcuse, Paz, Peters, Rawik, Roediger, Rosemont, Svitak, Taub and more. |
Dali, Salvador
£8.95 |
The second volume of his autobiography. Further astonishing and intimate insights into the mind of the man. Includes an introductory essay by JG Ballard. |
DE GOURMONT, Remy
£9.99 |
Originally published in 1896 and 1898, this consists of essays on the most important of his Symbolist and Decadent contemporaries - Dujardin, Gide, Huysmans, Lautremont, Rachilde, Rimbaud et al. Includes notes, biographies, manifestos, and many texts previously unavailable in English translation. |
DESNOS, LIMBOUR, LEIRIS & PERET
£9.99 |
Four remarkable novels from the early days of Surrealism - the 1920s, when the group was experimenting with "automatic writing" and other methods of "forcing inspiration". |
DESNOS, Robert
£6.99 |
A classic surrealist novel, a virtuoso work rife with shades of Sade and Lautreamont. Follows the violent, mysterious, bizarre, and above all marvellous erotic quest of the Corsair Sanglot. |
GARON, Paul
£3.95 |
Fifteen automatic texts, preceded by a short treatise on the "Fate of the Obsessive Image", by the author of "Blues and the Poetic Spirit". |
GREEN, Robert
£3.95 |
A wonderful anthology of poetry and beautiful art. Fine stuff indeed. |
Huelsenbeck, Richard (Ed)
£12.99 |
A new translation of the original collection first published in 1920. Contributors include Tristan Tzara, Walter Mehring, Francis Picabia, Hugo Ball, Johannes Baader, Philippe Soupault, Hans Arp,and many more. A staggering galaxy, lavishly illustrated, and this new edition adds dozens of other relevant texts, documents, portraits, photographs and biographies of all involved. |
HUYSMANS, JK
£7.99 |
THE writer of the French "Fin de siecle", Huysman's masterpiece Against Nature more or less defined the taste of the Decadents. Essentially a writer disillusioned, his books chart his autobiographical hero's attempt, and failure, to find some meaning in life. Another novel La-Bas described the hero's involvement in Satanism. Between these two seminal works Huysmans wrote another: Becalmed - it is their connecting link. |
£2.95 |
The result of a month-long series of meetings in 1986 of the Surrealist Groups in Chicago and Stockholm. Includes all the contemporary big names, with the likes of "Some Characteristics of the Current Period and Some Possibilities for Surrealist Intervention", and "Surrealism Here And Now". |
JABLONSKI, Joseph
£2.5 |
18 surrealist poems with a preface, "Dream Bait - or, Dr Faust, Your Hair Is On Fire". Drawings by Franklin Rosemont. |
JABLONSKI, Joseph
£3.95 |
Second superb collection, this time with illustrations by J Karl Bogartte. |
JARRY, Alfred
£7.99 |
His second book, published in a luxurious edition, carefully illustrated by the author. The text, partly based on the apocalyptic events of the Book of Revelations, embodies all of Jarry's future themes, from Symbolism and the anti-world parallel to this one, which is the domain of Jarry's famous science of "Pataphysics". |
JARRY, Alfred
£6.99 |
More of his post-De Quincey, post-Baudelaire, proto-Modernist prose. A great visionary novel, its hero, an army conscript, uses various means to escape his intolerable everyday life. Eventually he is consumed by dreams, hallucinations and drug orgies. It was the culmination of French symbolism, yet foresaw many of the concerns of the "modern novel", and profoundly influenced both Joyce and the Surrealists. |
JARRY, Alfred
£9.95 |
The three Ubu plays - savage satires on the idea of freedom. And very wonderful. |
JARRY, Alfred
£6.99 |
Jarry's second novel was written for a publisher of erotica in 1898. Sarcastic and anti-erotic, it's a classic of nonconformist prose and includes "The Other Alcestic" and "The Old Man of the Mountain", two of his most elegant and extraordinary works. |
Kasper, M.
£11.95 |
A collection of illustrated short-prose, experimental cartoons, anecdotes, parodies and rants. Art Spiegelman calls it "Low-key friendly surrealism, but haunting", and he has a point. |
KOSLOFSKY, Jocelyn
£3.95 |
Surrealist poems, dedicated to her brother, murdered by the police. |
LEIRIS, Michel
£5.99 |
The late, great ML's only novel. The author described it as expressing an appetite "for an unattainable purity, the faith...in the untamed imagination...horror...with regard to any kind of fixation". One of the high points of Surrealist (or any other) writing. |
LENNON, Nigel & GRIFFITH, Bill
£8.95 |
Jarry lived fast, died young,and refused to accept objective reality. He was a major influence on later artistic movements such as Dada and Surrealism, and his nihilistic 1896 play "Ubu Roi" is acknowledged as the turning point in modern drama. Sympathetic biography, with illustrations from Griffith. |
£3.95 |
16 pages of "A Revolutionary Poetic Tradition", "Black Music, By Any Means Necessary", "The Machinery of Mad Love" and more from the usual zany gang. |
LOW, Mary
£6.95 |
Active in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 and the later overthrow of Cuban dictator Batista, Mary Low has also played an important role in international surrealism. These poems reflect the ardour and anguish of her lifetime devotion to the cause of poetry, freedom and love. |
LOW, Mary
£6.95 |
New poems and collages. The poet, Peret claims, has no choice but to be a revolutionist...here's proof. |
MANTI, Peter
£3.95 |
19 illustrated surrealist poems. |
£12.95 |
A huge, lavish production. Cover by EF Granell. Preface by Franklin Rosemont. Numerous theoretical texts and poems, and over 100 reproductions of works by surrealists from 33 countries. |
NOEL, Bernard
£7.99 |
A modern (1969) erotic classic, intense and urgent, and written in a state of fury at the bourgeois "outrage against words" and abuse of language (against the backdrop of the French atrocities in Algeria). A book the authorities tried to ban. |
O'REILLY, Montagu
£4.5 |
A collection of strange US "Proustian Leninist" stories, highly wrought, exquisite - rich to the point of being cloying and precious; but decidedly unusual all the same. |
PERET, Benjamin
£6.5 |
The first authorised collection of the writings of one of the founders of Surrealism, this fat and beautifully designed tome contains two novels, selections of political and love poems, polemical texts and letters from the Spanish Civil war where he fought with the Durutti Column. Biographical introduction. Unrestrained works which move beyond innovation to revolution. |
PETERS, Nancy Joyce
£3.95 |
Fourteen poems from the now editor of City Lights books, illustrated with papercuts by Mado. |
PIERRE, Jose (ed)
£17.95 |
If you like love, you'll love surrealism! Transcripts of a dozen round-table discussions held by the surrealists to examine every aspect of love. All the stars were there - Breton, Peret, Ernst, Queneau, Aragon, Artaud et al - though women were present on only three occasions. "Would you let a woman see you with suspicious stains on your trousers?" "Do you believe that there exists one woman who is your destiny?" These questions and many others researched at the critical time for the surrealists. |
QUENEAU, Raymond
£5.5 |
A remarkable "detective novel", requiring active engagement on the part of the reader. Humorous, very precisely structured work by a modern European master. A real pleasure. |
QUENEAU, Raymond
£5.5 |
Excellent uncategorisable novel by the founder of the OuLiPo, one-time surrealist, pataphysician and philosopher. |
ROSEMONT, Franklin
£6.95 |
After several years of hitchhiking all over the US, Rosemont was welcomed into the Surrealist Movement by Breton in 1966, in Paris, and has been disturbing the pseudo-peace of America's miserabilist culture ever since. These new poems shake, rattle and roll the dice of revolt, humour and erotic passion, pointing to the revolutionary reintegration of humankind and wilderness in a life made livable at last. With 12 magic drawings by Karol Baron from Czechoslovakia. |
ROSEMONT, Franklin
£3.95 |
Seventeen surrealist poems and "A Note on Automatism", with positive and negative drawings by Schlechter Duvall. |
ROSEMONT, Franklin
£4.95 |
Twenty poems and drawings published in the heady days of May 68. Printed at the SDS printshop in Chicago. Also includes several incendiary tracts and diatribes by the Chicago Surrealist Group. Limited supply! |
ROSEMONT, Penelope
£3.95 |
Seventeen surrealist poems illustrated with alchemical engravings. |
ROSEMONT, Penelope
£6.95 |
Latest collection of surrealistic poetry from Penelope. |
ROTH, Gerhard
£7.99 |
Described as a "triumphant refutation of the death of modernism", this is a (kind of) novel from one of the founder members of the Forum Stadtark group, associated with Brus. Formally wild, decidedly idiosyncratic, morbid,and outlandish. |
ROUSSEL, Raymond
£8.99 |
Perhaps the most extraordinary writer this century, claimed as a precursor by authors associated with the Surrealists, Pataphysicians, Semioticians and Post-Structuralists amongst others. This collection presents for the first time in English four of his most important works: two plays, his final novel,and his most famous long poem. |
SAVINIO, Alberto
£6.99 |
A collection united by a common theme - the retelling of Classical myths. Savinio tears apart, reassembles and modernises some of the most famous stories of all time. As Breton commented "The whole of the modern myth still in process of formation is founded on two bodies of work - Alberto Savinio's and his brother". |
SCHWERNER, Armand
£4.99 |
Laborious fraudulent reconstruction of fictional Sumero-Akkadian tablets: a tour de force of experimental visual poetry. |
£1.5 |
Another one-off, that appeared in October 1978. With Penelope Rosemont, Nancy Joyce Peters, Joseph Jablonski et al. |
£1 |
Beautifully illustrated program to the dance performed by Alice Farley. With notes by Farley herself,and Franklin Rosemont. |
£1 |
The latest broadside from the Chicago Surrealist group, including an international surrealist declaration on the 'Columbus Quincentennial', poetry and rants. |
ZURN, Unica
£6.99 |
A disarmingly lucid description of thirteen years of mental crises (culminating in the author committing suicide). Not just a great description of mental collapse, the author's familiarity with Surrealist conceptions of the psyche, and her extraordinary self-posession during the most alarming experiences are allied to vivid descriptive powers which make this a literary as well as a psychological masterpiece. |
RODENBACH, Georges
£6.5 |
Originally published in 1892, this contemporary translation includes the photos chosen to illustrate the original edition. Acknowledged by Huysmans and Mallarme as one of the greatest achievements of the Decadent movement, this is a tale of doomed love and bizarre murder. |