Roland Trenary

Mahlon Blaine's Blooming Bally Bloody Book Roland Trenary 1st edition

Including over 100 Blaine illustrations (many previously unpublished, unearthed from the vaults of collectors and friends). Ribald, risqué, bawdy, naughty, salacious ? take your pick. Despite labels like these, Mahlon Blaine, 1920s book illustrator and pen-and-ink maestro, campaigned for ?freedom of art? against ?dysenteric hypocrites? who proclaimed ?beauty is obscene.? He mixed his commercial success with an underground vocation of creating ?playful drawings ? sly dancing thoughts that would delight all men blest with the godly gift of laughter.? This bohemian Rabelaisian, with 2000 published illustrations ranging from children?s books to erotica, fought ?for the beautiful and imaginative ? conceptions beyond all limits of time and morality.? John Steinbeck was one of his best friends, and Blaine illustrated two early novels. The actor John Carradine knew Blaine during his Hollywood career, as did Tina Modotti. Booksellers like Jake Zeitlin, Jack Brussel, and Bernard Guerney admired his work. He painted world-famous ballerina Lydia Lopovka. Did he win a Caldecott Award? A Newbury? Maybe not, but there were rumors. Did he know Woody Guthrie, and was Bob Dylan an acquaintance? Perhaps. Was his "Venus Sardonica" folio the high point of 20th Century published erotica? It's been claimed so, by scholar G. Legman. Who knows what to believe? This is his unauthorized autobiography.