Beatius Est Magis Dare

There’s a new Edward Gorey, to get the season off on the right foot; it’s called The Blue Aspic, and is published by Meredith for $2.95. We might as well proceed from here to handsome, wholesome, all-purpose Christmas books. There’s Ted Stokes’ Birds of the Atlantic Ocean (Macmillan, $12.95), with illustrations by Keith Shackleton And The Crafts of the Modern World, about anything you can think of that’s made by hand; 405 illustrations, 25 in color (Horizon, $15). The Art in Science series adds a third volume, devoted this year to drawings, paintings, and photographs from Scientific American (Simon & Schuster, $10), suitable for the same person who might like Philip Ritterbush’s The Art of Organic Forms, a book about the use by artists of biological imagery (Smithsonian Institution Press, $10). Time-Life Books has a fetching book about the larger Feliae, The Cats of Africa ($9.95) by Maitland A. Edey, with photographs by John Dominis.

Winslow Ames’ Prince Albert and Victorian Taste (Viking, $12) is both a fascinating study and something of an eye-opener, especially if you have your mind tidily made up about things Victorian. A shallower study of a period but a more entertaining one, is Virginia Cowles’ 1913: An End and a Beginning (Harper, $10.95), in which we get a look at London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Rome, Paris, and New York in the Belle Epoque. In New York the Vanderbilts amused themselves after dinner by smashing precious Nymphenburg and Copenhagen china against the wall (and were not ashamed to be photographed doing it) : enough to make a Bolshevik out of Robert E. Lee. A beguiling book.

GD

About the Author

Guy Davenport

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There’s a new Edward Gorey, to get the season off on the right foot; it’s called The Blue Aspic, and is published by Meredith for $2.95. We might as well proceed from here to handsome, wholesome, all-purpose Christmas books. There’s Ted Stokes’ Birds of the Atlantic Ocean (Macmillan, $12.95), with illustrations by Keith Shackleton And The Crafts of the Modern World, about anything you can think of that’s made by hand; 405 illustrations, 25 in color (Horizon, $15). The Art in Science series adds a third volume, devoted this year to drawings, paintings, and photographs from Scientific American (Simon & Schuster, $10), suitable for the same person who might like Philip Ritterbush’s The Art of Organic Forms, a book about the use by artists of biological imagery (Smithsonian Institution Press, $10). Time-Life Books has a fetching book about the larger Feliae, The Cats of Africa ($9.95) by Maitland A. Edey, with photographs by John Dominis.

Winslow Ames’ Prince Albert and Victorian Taste (Viking, $12) is both a fascinating study and something of an eye-opener, especially if you have your mind tidily made up about things Victorian. A shallower study of a period but a more entertaining one, is Virginia Cowles’ 1913: An End and a Beginning (Harper, $10.95), in which we get a look at London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Rome, Paris, and New York in the Belle Epoque. In New York the Vanderbilts amused themselves after dinner by smashing precious Nymphenburg and Copenhagen china against the wall (and were not ashamed to be photographed doing it) : enough to make a Bolshevik out of Robert E. Lee. A beguiling book.