367, [6] pages : chiefly colour illustrations ; 18 cm.
General Note
Printed and bound in West Germany by Staib+Mayer, Stuttgart. Published by arrangement with Edition Hansjörg Mayer. [Imprint].
Previous edition: 1980.
A Humument has been a work in progress since 1966 when artist Tom Phillips set himself a task: to find a second-hand book for threepence and alter every page by painting, collage and cut-up techniques to create an entirely new version. He found his threepenny novel in a junk shop on Peckham Rye, South London. This was an 1892 Victorian obscurity titled A Human Document by W.H. Mallock and he titled his altered book A Humument.
`Hoping that the reader would want to meet the book head on I have put the introduction at the end.’ Authors Preface.
`Self-evidently this work owes an incalculable debt to William Hurrell Mallock, the unwitting collaborator in its making. If supplementary fame accrues thereby to his name, may it compensate for any bruising of his spirit.’ [Author’s note].
Summary Note
`After its first publication in book form in 1980, A Humument rapidly became a cult classic. This new revised edition incorporates over fifty entirely new pages.
In a unique fiction word and image are blended with a richness scarcely seen since Blake.
The artist writes `I took a forgotten Victorian novel found by chance. I plundered, mined, and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophies which seemed to lurk within its wall of words. As I worked on it, I replaced the text I’d stripped away with visual images of all kinds. It began to tell and depict, amongst other memories, dreams and reflections, the sad story of Bill Toge, one of love’s casualties.’
Within this small format Tom Phillips has made the arts connect, bringing Wagner’s idea of `a comprehensive work of art’ to pocket-book proportions.’ [Dust jacket].
Provenance
The front pastedown carries a 20th-Century Royal Academy bookplate on which is written: `Presented by the author, 18 May 1987.’
Binding Note
Green cloth binding, lettered in silver on spine: `Tom Phillips. A Humument. T&H.’ Dustjacket with title and illustration.