small press:
Black Sparrow Press

Birdie Newborn. Click Bookaholic for my blog.

For about 25 years, starting a year or so in the mid-1970s (taking two years off for personal publishing), I worked as typesetter/text designer at Mackintosh Typography (formerly Mackintosh & Young), the print shop for Black Sparrow Press until 2002 when the print shop closed. THE PRINTING: Graham Mackintosh and his printer Richard Jimenez did printing on Heidelberg presses of all BSP covers, color title pages of first printings (you can tell that reprintings, which were done elsewhere, do not show colors on perfectbound title pages), checklists, catalogs, other BSP jobs. COLOR MIXING: All color work was done by manually weighing and mixing colors (not the common automated four-color dot process) to get full luminescence for Barbara Martin's inventive covers. CHECK COPIES: With typical print runs of 3,000, some editions, such as the Bukowski, Coleman, or Wakoski, would require color matching over and over again. "Jim" (Richard Jimenez) kept one copy of the original printing to check against the newly mixed colors. A few of these well-handled check copies still exist, usually with a PMS number indicating the specific shade used. BOOK DESIGN: Except for the covers, I designed and typeset (before the computer age!) the innards of approximately 300+ BSP books, which were then sent to be printed and bound at Edwards Brothers. Someday I may write about those years …

THE BLACK SPARROW LIST

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BBB

CHARLES BUKOWSKI (star of the BSP line of books)

Hardcover, not previously sold.

• Charles Bukowski. Betting on the Muse. Poems and Stories.
• Charles Bukowski. Bone Palace Ballet. New Poems. One of an edition of 750.
• Charles Bukowski. The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. Illustrated by Robert Crumb. First Edition, First Printing. 1998.
• Charles Bukowski. Hollywood. First edition, First Printing. 1989.
• Charles Bukowski. The Last Night of the Earth Poems. First edition, First Printing. Signed and numbered.
• Charles Bukowski. Love Is a Dog from Hell. Poems 1974-1977. First edition First Printing w/original oil signed by author on first page , also signed on the colophon page, with a cartoon of a man and a dog. The oil is an abstract painting in black, yellow, and green signed BUK with tissue and plastic protectors preceding title page (painting is thick enough to indent the front endsheet). 1977. Stated as "Typesetter's Copy."
• Charles Bukowski. The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps. New Poems. First edition, First Printing, with a serigraph of a drawing by Bukowski bound in after the title page ("Where's the men's room?" in color). 2001. No. 429 of an edition of 526.
• Charles Bukowski. Open All Night. New Poems. First edition, First Printing. Serigraph of abstract drawing, pen and crayon, signed and dated 5-25-65. Deluxe edition no. 347 of edition of 426 printed. 2000.
• Charles Bukowski. Pulp. A Novel. First Edition, First Printing. Signed by author. Bukowski's venture into writing detective crime fiction. No. 555 of a signed edition of 750. 1994.
• Charles Bukowski. Reach for the Sun. Selected Letters 1978-1994. Volume 3. Edited by Seamus Cooney. 1999. First Edition, First Printing.
• Charles Bukowski. The Roominghouse Madrigals. Early Selected Poems 1946-1966. 1988. edition of 500.
• SOLD. Charles Bukowski. Septuagenarian Stew. Stories and Poems. On reaching seventy. First Edition, First Printing. Marked "Presentation Copy" and signed on the colophon page. 1990.
• Charles Bukowski. Shakespeare Never Did This. Photographs by Michael Montfort.
• Charles Bukowski. what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Perfectbound

• Bring Me Your Love Illustrated by Robert Crumb. Black Sparrow Press..
• Dangling in the Tournefortia- First edition First printing "Printers Copy" with note to printer on back cover and some printers ink on the front cover .
• Factotum- 3 copies: One of them is the "work copy" and has some pencilling and a little bit of spilled ink, other two are like brand new.
• Hot Water Music- First edition First printing.
• Last Night of the Earth- First edition First printing. Has a couple of stains on the front cover otherwise perfect.
• Living on Luck- 2 copies: First Edition First Printing one of them is the printers check copy so there are a couple of pencilled notes on it.
• Love is a Dog from Hell- 3 copies: One First Edition First Printing copy, editor's copy with a few punctuation corrections in red pencil, the other two are later printings in good condition.
• Mockingbird Wish me Luck- Printers copy.
• Open all Night- First Edition First Printing other than a couple of stains on cover in very good shape.
• Pulp- First Edition First Printing.
• Rooming House Madrigals- First edition First Printing.
• South of no North- .
• The Day it Snowed in L.A.- 2 copies in good condition.
• There's no Business. Illustrated by Robert Crumb.
• Play the Piano Drunk like a Percussion Instrument until the Fingers began to Bleed. Two copies: one First edition First Printing "Printers Copy," one fourth printing like new.
• War all the Time- First edition First Printing.
• Women- two copies: one "work copy" well worn, one copy like new.

Smaller pieces

• Three by Bukowski 2 copies paper bound very good.
• Assorted New Year's Greetings Handbound with boards numbered and signed. Some have water damage.

• Assorted New Year's Greetings Paperbound. Some have water damage.

Books About Charles Bukowski

• Against the American Dream. Essays on Charles Bukowski. Russell Harrison.
• Special Limited Edition Book of Photographs of Bukowski taken by Michael Montfort.
• (Charles Bukowski.) A Descriptive Bibliography of the Primary Publications of Charles Bukowski. Aaron Krumhansl.
• (Charles Bukowski.) A Descriptive Bibliography of the Primary Publications of Charles Bukowski. Aaron Krumhansl.

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CCC

• (BSP) Laura Chester. The Stone Baby.
• Paul Christensen. Minding the Underground. Clayton Eshleman and Late Postmodernism.
• Tom Clark. Disordered Ideas.
• Wanda Coleman. Crabs for Breakfast. 130 printed.
• (another star in BSP) Wanda Coleman. A War of Eyes.
• (a significant small pressman) Harry Crosby. Shadows of the Sun. The Diaries of Harry Crosby.

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DDD

• Theodore Dreiser. Fulfilment and Other Tales of Women and Men. Edited by T.D. Nostwich.

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EEE

• Clayton Eshleman. Hades in Manganese.

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FFF

• Thais Frank. A Brief History of Camouflage.

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JJJ

• Sherril Jaffe. The Faces Reappear.
• Sherril Jaffe. The Unexamined Wife.

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KKK

• Robert Kelly. A Strange Market.
• Robert Kelly. The Time of Voice. Poems 1994-1996.
  
  

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  OOO

  • Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. The Complete Correspondence. Volume 8. Edited by George F. Butterick.
  
  

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  PPP

  • James Purdy. 63: Dream Palace. Selected Stories 1956-1987. Signed by the author, with a pen drawing by author.
  • James Purdy. 63: Dream Palace. Selected Stories 1956-1987. Signed by the author
  
  
  
  

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  SSS

  • Edward Sanders. Hymn to the Rebel Cafe.
  • John Sanford. The Season It Was Winter. Scenes from the Life of an American Jew Volume 5
  
  

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