Hockney's Alphabet
London: Faber and Faber for the AIDS Crisis Trust, 1991.
First edition, deluxe limited issue. Number 120 of a limited 250 copies signed by the contributors. Twenty-six writers contribute to this AIDS fundraiser, edited by Stephen Spender and with drawings by David Hockney. Signed by Hockney and Spender, and also also signed by Joyce Carol Oates, Iris Murdoch, Normal Mailer, Seamus Heaney, Martin Amis, Erica Jong, Ian McEwan, Nigel Nicholson, Margaret Drabble, Craig Raine, William Boyd, V.S. Pritchett, Doris Lessing, William Golding, Arthur Miller, Ted Hughes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, John Updike, Susan Sontag, Douglas Adams, and Patrick Leigh Fermor. Four living contributors declined to sign this edition -- Paul Theroux, Ted Hughes, Anthony Burgess and Gore Vidal. Bound in publisher's blue laid paper boards over vellum spine lettered in gilt; housed in publisher's blue laid paper case with paper label to the upper board. Fine. This collaborative monograph contains the 26 letters of the alphabet plus "&," each accompanied by a poem or short text written by a distinguished author or poet with a full-page illustration by Hockney. This was made to raise funds for victims of AIDS. Scarce in this edition.
Price: $8,500