The Marriage of True Minds

An Anthology for an Anniversary
Chosen by Jan & Crispin Elsted,
with various engravings

Estimated publication Spring 2023

We have conceived this book as a celebration of our 50 years of marriage and our 45 years as Barbarians. It comprises fifty of our favourite love poems, reaching back to classical Greece and the Old Testament, and forward through the late Middle Ages, the renaissance, and the 18th and 19th centuries to the present day, by twenty-eight poets ranging from the writer(s) of The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s to lyrics by Sappho to Chaucer, Spenser and Donne, Marvell, Clare, Christina Rossetti, Tennyson and Yeats, to contemporaries Jan Zwicky and Heather Simeney MacLeod, among many others – not forgetting the ubiquitous Anonymous, who contributes five. Eight of Shakespeare’s sonnets form a thematic spine throughout the book.

We invited seven engravers who have illustrated our books and have become part of our lives as friends and collaborators to contribute engravings to accompany poems of their choice: Richard Wagener has engraved a stunning frontispiece block, while Abigail Rorer, Andy English, Simon Brett, Peter Lazarov, Walter Bachinski, and Graham Williams have chosen to illustrate poems that range from the Middle English to the contemporary. The blocks are all in hand, and Jan is printing them before beginning the text, which she will print while Crispin and Apollonia continue to work on the Curwen book.

The type we have chosen for the book is Pastonchi, in its inaugural use here at the press – a graceful, elegant but little-known face issued by Monotype in 1929, designed by the Italian poet Francesco Pastonchi with the typographer Eduardo Cotti to be used to print an edition of the Italian classics. It is ideally suited to poetry, and we are delighted to add it to our range of typefaces.

So many subscribers prefer the deluxe state that there seemed little point for this particular book to appear in a regular state as well, so this title will be published in only one state which is essentially a deluxe edition. The book will be bound in half-leather with printed paper over boards and slipcased with a portfolio of the engravings.

Visit our Ordering page to place an order for this title.