iOho! The Drawings by Rex Whistler. The Words by Laurence Whistler (RB272)

Published 1946: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition / Illustrated throughout

Original pictorial boards. 36 very clean and bright pages. Covers are rubbed and faded with time and bumped on the corners consistent with age and the spine back is chipped as shown in images although covers still remain intact. Scarce! (RB272)

Postage €4.00.
An Post prepaid postage envelopes within the Republic of Ireland, with no weight restrictions from €6.95.

Illustrated with 15 reversible heads and 30 associated verses. Whistler's brother, Laurence, wittingly catches the spirit of the illustrated faces in the verses which accompany them. The work has no front or back, or rather two of each, so the reader is enabled to enter the gallery in either direction.

https://www.rookebooks.com/1946-oho-rex-whistler-drawings-laurence-whistler-reversible-faces-grotesque

Reversible text by Laurence Whistler and drawings by Rex Whistler

Oho! The Drawings by Rex Whistler. The Words by Laurence Whistler

Black and white full page illustrations throughout off Rex Whistler's "grotesque and amusing 'Reversible Faces'". [Google Books]

This is one of the most unusual volumes of poetry, because the poems are far less engaging and memorable than the illustrations for which they were made. The witty and whimsical British artist, Rex Whistler, produced a series of drawings of people which, when turned upside down, show a different but related person; his brother Laurence produced poems to describe the relationships. The front and back covers are identical–except that there is no front and back; the book can be opened and read from either end. There are two poems facing each illustration, the lower one describing the face you see, the upper one appearing upside down… until you turn the book around and find it describes the other face.

The nurse and the patient; the old man and the young one; the panicked householder calling the Fire Department and the fireman delighted to have work; the glum Mayor of Standon Ceremony and the gleeful Madam the Mayor of Stanster Reason… as for the cover illustration, the young and old women, Laurence Whistler begins the former’s poem:

The sisters truly thought she looked like that,
Cinderella, with her brush and pan,
Slip-slopping down-at-heel around the flat,
Ash-coloured where she sat,
Deep in some fatuous daydream of a Man.

The reverse poem is the Fairy Godmother’s, beginning:

Be home by twelve!
The one condition
For beauty tremulous
With ambition.

The drawings were inspired by this illustration in the 1682 book ‘The Church of Rome Evidently Proved Heretick’ by Peter Berault:

It’s a wonderful book. As the publishers wrote: “However you put this book down it will lie face up, which is to say face down. And upside down is how it can never be slipped into a bookshelf.”

https://formalverse.com/2021/05/10/review-oho-by-rex-whistler-words-by-laurence-whistler/