Italy [Limited Edition]

Berkeley: The Figures, 1980. First Edition. Limited issue, no.7 of 7 copies, signed on colophon with an original pencil drawing in glassine envelope laid in; from a total edition of 500 copies. 12mo; pictorial card wrappers; 51,(1)pp; illus.

A fairly early publication by Drucker, and given the limitation surely one of the most difficult of her limited editions for the collector to obtain. Italy was written in 1979, after Drucker's return home following six months of travel abroad; she describes it as: "Not precisely a travel narrative, it had been one of several "real accounts" that established a strain of writing practice that continues to the present ... Italy was ... written in speed, telegraphic style, to recount observations between objective observation and subjective experience, riding the line through images and details, experientially based but not necessarily personal" (see "Johanna Drucker's Artist's Books," on-line resource at johannadrucker dot net). Aside from the colophon printed inside the rear cover, the limited edition does not differ from the commercially-printed trade edition; both text and drawings are offset-printed, resulting in a rather commonplace little paperback which, as Drucker herself notes, "...barely qualifies as an artist's book." Nonetheless a true rarity, and a significant work in Drucker's early oeuvre.