a complete set of this important literary review - an elegant showcase of new work from a broad range of sources.

John Ashberry is lauded as one of the most influential American poets of the twentieth century, he won numerous prizes including the Pullitzer and the National Book Award. He was pipped to win a Nobel prize for decades but never gained the accolade. In his editorship he produced a remarkable blend of poetry, fiction, and commentary dealing not only with the world of poetry and literature, but with avant-garde art, theatre, film, performance, and installation art.

The inception of Art and Literature was an interview conducted by Ashberry with the French artist Jean Hélion in the early 1960s whilst living in Paris. Hélion said the British artists Anne Dunn and Rodrigo Moynihan wanted to meet him and they proposed to form an intellectual art journal. Dunn also invited Sonia Orwell to the team who had worked with Cyrill Connolly on Horizon and was married to George Orwell.

Ashberry divulged in a 2014 interview with Bomb magazine that he wasn't at all keen on Sonia Orwell. He said her contributions were normally the one blemish in each issue and that her taste in literature was awful. An apartment was rented in Saint-Germain-des-Prés to use as an office but according to Ashberry, Orwell was normally too hungover to make it in. She was very well connected and counted Picasso amongst her friends but her role as editor ended after six issues.

First editions, 12 vols; 8vo; profusely illustrated; publisher's printed wrappers with glassine wrappers, in good condition.