Avalun Drucke - Marino Faliero

As the current discussion on the forum seems to mainly focus on newly released fine press books, I thought it would be fun to add some variety. My apologies in advance for my mediocre English and photography skills.

Marino Faliero is a tragic play written by Lord Byron in 1820. It is set in Venice in 1355, and describes the attempted coup d'etat by Faliero, the 55th Doge of Venice, which ultimately failed and ended in his execution.

This edition of the book was done in 1922 by the Avalun Verlag, an Austrian publisher founded in 1919 by Julius Bruell. While Avalun did publish some books that would not be considered fine press, their main output appears to be a collection of 41 fine press books, the Avalun Drucke, of which this one is the 15th. All of these were printed in low print runs (between 110 and 480 copies), using handmade paper and usually beautiful bindings. Most of these books are in German, but Faliero is left untranslated in its original English. Most of the Avalun Drucke contain original illustrations by contemporary artists. The most desirable appears to be Schiller's "Die Raeuber" illustrated by Lovis Corinth.

Marino Faliero is illustrated with 13 original etchings by the German artist Sepp Frank. You will find information on this forum on some of Frank's other works done for the press of Dr. Julius Schroeder. Marino Faliero was printed by Knorr and Hirth and Heinrich Wetteroth in Munich (another overlap with at least one of the Schroeder books) and bound by P.A. Demeter in Hellerau.

This book was issued in 275 copies. 150 copies were bound in full vellum and 125 in half vellum with black paper boards. The first 50 (numbered with Roman numerals) contained an additional set of prints. My copy is one of the first 50, however, it does not contain the set of prints. All illustrations in this book are initialed by the illustrator, which is not the case for the 125 copies bound in half vellum.

Binding and Textblock







Illustrations

Add that to the list then.

Beautiful thank you for sharing!

"...In Fife Acts"?? Gosh, I hope they did better with proofreading the text itself....

Really beautiful!

>3 kermaier: heh, I didn't even notice that :)

>4 astropi:
Beautiful, no doubt.
Unfortunately I’ve spotted another typo in the photo of page 100: “I memory” instead of “In memory”. :-(

>3 kermaier:

You've never heard of Scottish Fife Acts? :?

>5 kermaier:

And 'istelf' on the same page. A typesetter with little English, I suppose, doing it literatim. Beautiful book, and I'm not sure these typos matter all that much - the play may not be Byron's finest work.

Hmmm, it would actually be really interesting for someone to go through the book and create an erratum with all the errors.
teppi2 any chance you're up for it? :)

>9 astropi: Sounds like a interesting exercise, I will put it on my to do list, but it might be a while until I can complete it.

>10 teppi2: if you ever want to send me the book, or any other similar beauty, I'll do it for free ;)

There's a copy for sale on ebay. I tried to bid but someone has set a higher bid which I can't outbid. Maybe fellow Librarything users will be interested. Sepp Frank's illustrations are superb.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Avalun-Print-Byron-MARINO-FALIERO-13-Etchings-Sepp-Fran...

>12 Lukas1990:

Have at it guys. I am a tepid Byron fan, so no competition from me!