“If I could have one part of the world back to the way it used to be, I would not choose Dresden before the fire bombing, Rome before Nero, or London before the Blitz. I would not resurrect Babylon, Carthage or San Francisco. Let the leaning tower lean and the hanging gardens hang. I want the Mississippi Gulf Coast back as it was before Hurricane Camille.”
This quote comes from Elizabeth Spencer’s Introduction to her collection of short stories “On the Gulf,” and her feelings might seem even more timely today when we think of the loss suffered from Hurricane Katrina. “On the Gulf” was published as part of the University Press of Mississippi’s Author and Artist Series in 1991. All six stories in “On the Gulf” are set along the Gulf of Mexico and the lives of women take center stage from New Orleans to Ship Island to Florida.
All of the stories had been previously published, but Spencer found this republication particularly appealing when the press suggested that her stories be paired with the art of the late Walter Anderson. Every page has a banner heading of Anderson’s art work and each story has multiple full-page black-and-white drawings from Anderson. In her many recollections of the coast in her opening essay, Spencer remembered Walter Anderson: “He seemed, like the Lord God before him, to be creating every day, fish, fowl, plants, flowers, trees, sea and air . . .”
Several other books in the Mississippi Author and Artist series have become as collectible as “On the Gulf.” Here is a list of some early publications—and note the care the press took pairing our great Mississippi authors and artists.
“Morgana” by Eudora Welty with the art of Mildred Nungester Wolfe (1988) includes two stories from Welty’s “Golden Apples.
“Black Cloud, White Cloud” by Ellen Douglas with the art of Elizabeth Wolfe (1989) is Douglas’s only collection of short fiction.
“Homecomings” by Willie Morris with the art of William Dunlap (1989) features Morris’s reflections on the meaning of home.
“The Debutante Ball” by Beth Henley with the art of Lynn Green Root (1989) presents the Pulitzer-prize winning playwright’s work in a new light.
“After All It’s Only a Game” by Willie Morris also with the art of Lynn Green Root (1992) includes fiction and nonfiction on basketball, baseball, and football.
The Author and Artist series was issued in both trade and limited edition series. The trade editions were large format hardbacks with decorative dust jackets, and book lovers might have had the opportunity to have them signed by author and artist. The limited editions were printed in limited number and signed by the author and artist, bound in cloth, and housed in a protective slipcase.
Written by Lisa Newman, A version of this column was published in The Clarion-Ledger’s Sunday Mississippi Books page.
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