BUKOWSKI, Charles (1920-94). It Catches my Heart in its Hands, New Orleans, Loujon Press, 1963, 8vo, printed on multi-coloured paper, original boards. FIRST EDITION. ONE OF 777 COPIES, SIGNED AND DATED BY THE AUTHOR IN SILVER INK. Krumhansl 12.

BUKOWSKI, Charles (1920-94).  It Catches my Heart in its Hands. New & Selected Poems 1955-1963. Introduction by John William Corrington. Gypsy Lou Series No. 1: A Loujon Press Award Book. New Orleans: Loujon Press, 1963. Large 8vo (253 x 190mm). Printed on multi-coloured paper of different widths, illustrations, four of the poems in a printed facsimile of the author's holograph each with a printed illustration by the author, followed by a printed version of the poem (a few leaves at the front stained at the fore-edge). Original coloured pictorial and decorated boards with cork-lined upper cover and incorporating a monochrome photographed portrait of Bukowski by John Stevens, uncut (some light staining to the lower board). Provenance: from the Collection of David Kotthoff; Kathy Burnett (name and address in Ohio written on the inside of the front cover); contemporary inscriptions on the tissue guard at the front. FIRST EDITION of Bukowski's most beautifully produced book and the crowning achievement of the Loujon Press. ONE OF 777 COPIES OF THE "SIGNED EDITION", SIGNED AND DATED "CHARLES BUKOWSKI 12-15-63" IN SILVER INK ON THE FIRST LEAF. The lengthy and colourful colophon, written by Jon & Louise Webb, states: "777 copies of this book were printed by the editors of Loujon Press, one page at a time, handfed with 12-point Garamond Old Style for the poems, 18-point Pabst O. S. for the titles - to an ancient 8 by 12 Chandler & Price letterpress; on Linweave Spectra paper throughout ... The printing, all manual, was done thru the steamy months of June to September, 1963, in a slave quarters workshop back of a sagging ex-mansion in the French Quarter in New Orleans; and hand-bound in October - the workshop's windows gaping out into a delightful walled-in courtyard dense to its broken-bottled brims with rotting banana trees, stinkweed and vine, & moths, spiders, snails, bats, gnats, ticks, wasps, silverfish, ants, flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches big as mice & lizards, none of whom gave annoyance except accidentally [etc] ..."; Dorbin A5 (providing a detailed description of the very complicated binding and its variants, without assigning precedence); Krumhansl 12.