Jean Cocteau

A group of four books by Jean Cocteau, inscribed to the poet, writer and artist José García Villa.

• Sold as a set of 4.
• Jean Cocteau (French).

Orphée.

London: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Octavo.

Number 59 of 100 numbered copies signed by Cocteau and Pablo Picasso.

Frontispiece after a drawing by Picasso.

Bound in publisher’s gilt-lettered black cloth.

The Eagle Has Two Heads.

London: Vision Press, Ltd., 1948.

Octavo.

Inscribed by Cocteau, with an illustration, on the flyleaf.

Bound in publisher’s gilt-lettered black cloth and printed dustjacket.

Journals of John Cocteau.

New York: Criterion Books, 1956.

Octavo.

Frontispiece photographic portrait of Cocteau, printed signature on the title, and several printed illustrations by Cocteau.

Bound in publisher’s gilt-lettered black cloth, top edge green, in printed dust jacket.

The White Paper.

New York: The Macauly Company, 1958.

Octavo.

Eleven illustrations by Cocteau, printed in black.

Bound in original black cloth, upper board stamped with publisher’s device, spine lettered in white, with pictorial dustjacket.

This group of books by Cocteau was owned by the poet, writer and artist José García Villa. Villa was born in Manila in 1908, before moving to New Mexico to pursue his studies, and ultimately to Greenwich Village in New York City. There, he joined a community of modernist poets, including e.e. cummings, Marianne Moore and W.H. Auden, among others, and was affectionately known as "The Pope of Greenwich Village." He wrote his poems under the pseudonym Doveglion (a composite of dove, eagle and lion) and was admired, according to Marianne Moore, for "the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems." His 1933 story collection, Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others, was "the first work of fiction by a Filipino writer published by a major United States-based press." Villa received “numerous honors and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Philippines Heritage Award, a Poetry Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Shelley Memorial Award. In 1973 he was named a National Artist of the Philippines, and he also served as a cultural advisor to the Philippine government. He died in New York City on February 7, 1997.”

This item is final sale and not eligible for return.

José García Villa