Corinne Gisel, A book is a book is a book is a book, self-published, The Netherlands, 2012
This is a love letter to the book. Or, more precisely, a love letter to a book: D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
It is Corinne Gisel’s graduation project at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie; a very beautiful object, using different papers and different types of printing.
A text runs along the top of the pages starting with “Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a book…”, and “… a book is…”. What follows is an exploration of every aspect of the book: the text, the language, the design, the images, the typography, the author, the readers, the publisher, the critics,…It is illustrated with reproductions from different editions of the book, book covers, texts, drawings, photographs, cartoons… it even includes a mini-essay on the evolution of Penguin covers, from Edward Young to David Pearson, including Jan Tschichold’s 1947 composition rules for Penguin.
Texts are extracted from prefaces, introductions, forewords and critical essays, included in the books, or written about it, covering the history of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, its critical reception, and its impact on culture. The book caused a lot of controversy when it was published because of its explicit language, and it is quite telling that what happened around it was more important, had more lasting consequences than the text itself.
An insert informs us that the book was inspired by Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller, “a book that ever starts and never ends and intensely contemplates its own existence as a book.”
Corinne Gisel
A book is a book is a book is a book
privately published in Amsterdam, The Netherlands;
first edition, 2012; 233 × 160 mm.; 184 pages; edition of 10;
edited and designed by Corinne Gisel; printed by Knust in Nijmegen, Stencilkelder in Amsterdam and at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; perfect bound;
LOVELY…
Book & book &… Calvino’s quotation.
Glad you like it!