Subasta Bidspirit | STEADMAN RALPH: (1936- ) 'I

STEADMAN RALPH: (1936- ) 'I am in search of magic - in search of Roald Dahl. What made him tick?' - STEADMAN RALPH: (1936- ) British illustrator, best known for his collaboration with the American writer Hunter S. Thompson. An extensive correspondence collection of forty-two A.Ls.S. (the majority to the versos of postcards, many featuring images of Steadman's work) and nine T.Ls.S., Ralph , sixty-six pages (total), 4to and smaller, various places (Maidstone, Kent, France and Italy), March 1980 - January 1997, all to Tom Maschler. The substantial, and often amusing, correspondence covers a wide range of subjects, including Steadman's work, in part, 'Many thanks for your letter and your marvellous enthusiasm. I am very happy that Cape & your good self are prepared to take me on with a project that hardly has any bones yet.....I doubt if I will begin Leonardo for 2 or 3 months but that does not prevent me reading about my subject and making notes which is how I set about the book on Freud' (18th March 1980), 'It's fascinating sitting in spots where the old boy [Leonardo da Vinci] might have sat. I was unable to lie on his bed or use the secret tunnel used by Francois I to visit him daily' (25th April 1981), ' ”Bloody good!!” he said when he caught sight of the first drawing. ”How many more are there?” ”How many do you want?” ”That depends” ”On what?” ”How many disciples turn up - can you manage another eleven - No problem' (31st August 1982), 'If he can sell 5000 copies there must be another 50,000 who would buy it if they only knew about it - at least. There is a huge army of committed fans over there [America] but I don't think they know the book exists. All I know is when I did a signing the queue went down the street - New York & West coast. Maybe they were all my fans and there aren't any more but do you believe that. Anyway, one of these days we'll blast through the bullet proof barrier & wonder why we worried' (21st December 1984), 'When Glasgow Art Gallery asked for copies of ”I Leonardo” to sell during the course of my exhibition there, they were informed that you are now completely out of the 2nd edition. Surely it is worth a reprint even for this country only' (3rd May 1985), '... [I] have been asked to front a T.V. show on our attitudes to animals (J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss etc to be interviewed) I've just been to a bullfight, so I'm on dodgy ground' (28th September 1995). 'I will be researching the ways of cannibals - where they were - who they ate - who tasted best and what their favourite sauces are. Did they have head chefs - table manners - religious symbolism & belief in the powers allotted to various parts of the body......Are we in fact missing a vital part of our diets which no amount of lamb or pig can assuage?.....It's a wide & wonderful subject Tom, and in the metaphysical sense we act like cannibals today in this dog eat dog society of ours' (19th October 1995), 'I have read The Mildenhall Treasure - it is a fine TRUE tale of trust and paranoic avarice. Though, Butcher's wife knew . I love the descriptive atmospherics as much as [Roald] Dahl's grasp of human nature. It could be special, but why, I ask myself am I illustrating Dahl, when I could be hurling myself into Rabelais' (16th June 1996), 'I was thrilled to hear from you again. We have now reorganised the answering machines especially for you so that if you want to sing a song, tell me a story, or recite a piece of concrete poetry, you know I will hear it in future' (n.d., although 1996), 'Two things in defence of the ”Snags”. Defence one: Children love repetition. Defence two: Childrem don't recognise sophistication; only the inherent spirit of fun, the game itself played out between parent & child. I know. It has been tried out on a nursery school full of children and they ask for more. Defence three even: It is a great way to learn punctuation & a wonderful way to read pictures....' (18th June 1996), 'I am in search of magic - in search of Roald Dahl. What made him tick?' (26th November 1996), 'Over the last few months I have been doing some strange but intriguing, and funny!, pictures in the evenings on my knee (on paper of course) which I call my knee jobs. They seem like the basis for a book though I don't quite know how or why' (6th January 1997), 'Cannibals at the moment are rife in the world of publishing, literart meat-eaters, retail/wholesale packagers, remainderers of books which are in their prime, even 'Animal Farm' which is No. 3 in the best 100 books of the 20th century - trashed because 'its sale has gone down to a trickle' and who, I wonder, is prepared to admit blame?......Unless the book smells like a Body Shop and leaps off the shelf to bite you up the arse, what chance do new books have, except one on cannibals who might like a piece of arse for supper' (19th January 1997),