Books: A Christmas Shelf: Bigness and Beauty

A Christmas Shelf

More of everything—particularly 'big, rich, fat, square Christmas books—seems to be the order of the season. Many are bought at the Frankfurt Book Fair from enterprising European publishers and imported wholesale. Several contain perfunctory yet prolix texts by scholars who take the money but regard the work as intellectual slumming; and the pictures are stuck in at random like plums in a Christmas pudding. Each year, though, a few more big books show encouraging signs of aim and editing. Still others are notable for size, subject matter, outrageous pricing and, occasionally, sheer beauty. Among the selections listed below, hard-driven Christmas-gift seekers will even find a handful of really good books—products of taste, intelligence, talent and the kind of professional care that almost amounts to love.

$39.95 to $75

ANDREW WYETH by Richard Meryman. 174 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $75.

The now bleak, now mellow autumnal world of America's most popular painter presented in lovingly printed reproductions. Better than a Wyeth show at a museum, partly because nobody's head gets in the way, partly because a brief, unassuming but fondly skillful text weaves together the man and his work.

THE FIRST FOLIO OF SHAKESPEARE, prepared by Charlton Hinman. 928 pages. Norton. $75.

As rare books go, the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays (1623) is not very rare: probably about 1,000 copies were printed, and well over 200 are still in existence. Though the original folio copies are the most authentic texts of Shakespeare's works, scores of them differ in innumerable minor ways—they were printed in odd lots and badly proofread. Lately, scholars, equipped with a special electronic device for detecting textual variations, have coordinated all the various versions and now offer what they assert is the clearest and most accurate composite text ever. Presented in facsimile form and substantially bound in leather, the enormous volume (10 in. by 14⅜ in. by 3¼ in.) will no doubt prove useful to schools and scholars. People who read Shakespeare mainly for pleasure, however, will find the original 1623 type a bit hard to decipher. Moreover, the pages have a slightly dingy look.

GREAT DRAWINGS OF THE LOUVRE MUSEUM by Roseline Bacou and Maurice Serullaz. 666 pages. 3 vols. George Braziller. $60.

The pen-and-ink drawings, watercolors and wash and chalk sketches of great master painters are rarely seen. They fade easily on exposure to light and so are customarily kept in museum storerooms, viewable only upon special appointment. A great pity, as this collection amply illustrates. The 300 selections present a remarkable range of style and subject and a surprising spectrum of soft colors (the chalks and washes) that often show off the sharp eye and skeletal strength of the artist better than works done in larger compass.

GALAPAGOS: THE FLOW OF WILDNESS. 2 vols. Sierra Club. $55.