Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Mark Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (2)

Two volumes; 20th-century American fine press printing: The Limited Editions Club (LEC).

Fascinating history that ties together the Great Depression, the democratization of fine art, and the specific origins of Mark Twain's literary career.

Mid-Depression printing by George Macy

These books were published sequentially by the Limited Editions Club in 1930 (Irving) and 1935 (Twain).

The LEC was founded by George Macy in October 1929—fewer than thirty days before the infamous Wall Street crash. Despite the onset of the Great Depression, Macy’s venture survived by offering a subscription model limited strictly to 1,500 members.

Instead of printing uniform sets, Macy treated every single book as a unique canvas. He commissioned the world's finest typographers, book designers, and illustrators to design them, turning classic literature into highly collectible pieces of fine art.

Typographic Pedigree

The Sleepy Hollow Volume (1930): Designed and printed by Carl Purington Rollins at the Yale University Press. Rollins used a stark, elegant layout with a customized typographic feel to subtly evoke the early 19th-century American setting of Irving's Hudson Valley. It features striking illustrations by etch-master John Steuart Curry.

The Jumping Frog Volume (1935): Designed and printed by Edward Alonzo Miller at the Marchbanks Press in New York. The cover features a brilliant, minimalist gold-stamped illustration of the famous frog against a two-tone cloth binding. It was beautifully illustrated with hand-colored tint blocks by Gordon Ross.

The Mark Twain Significance: The Story That Made "Twain"

This book holds massive historical weight in American literary lore. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (originally published in 1865) was the exact short story that catapulted a struggling, unknown journalist named Samuel Clemens into the national spotlight under the pen name Mark Twain.

Before this story about a rigged frog-jumping contest in a California mining camp was published in a New York Saturday press, Clemens was broke and contemplating giving up writing altogether. Its overnight success established the distinct genre of American frontier humor and laid the foundation for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Craftsmanship Element

What makes these specific LEC editions so revered by bibliophiles is that they represent the tail-end of the true "hot metal" and letterpress era. When you open these books, you can actually feel the heavy impression of the metal type into the premium, custom-made rag paper—a tactile experience completely lost in modern offset printing.

Minor edge wear.

Each vol: 155mm x 255mm

R1,200 (for both)