Copyright status of Papé's plates

DiscussieThe Rabble Discuss Cabell: James Branch Cabell &c

Sluit je aan bij LibraryThing om te posten.

Copyright status of Papé's plates

Dit onderwerp is gemarkeerd als "slapend"—het laatste bericht is van meer dan 90 dagen geleden. Je kan het activeren door een een bericht toe te voegen.

1rainlights
Bewerkt: jun 30, 2013, 1:40 pm

Dear group,

Me and some friends are about to put together a collection of conference proceedings, and I'm in the fortunate position to contribute a short paper on Cabell, focusing on the many incarnations of the "witch-woman" in his work. I'd very much like to include a few of Frank C. Papé's marvelous plates, as well. However, I have no idea about their copyright status.

While Wikipedia for example claims the "Jurgen" plates to be in the public domain (by reason of first publication before 1923), I think they made a mistake dating them to 1921 -- the first illustrated edition of Jurgen should be 1923, not 1921, shouldn't it? (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_C._Papé)

And the plates he did for "The Silver Stallion" and Cabell's other works are even younger if I'm not mistaken. Further complications arise from the fact that we're located in Heidelberg and are going to use a German publisher.

Does anybody have any idea whom to ask about permission for using Papés plates in our book?

Thank you all very much!

PS Just realized I was mistaken, shame on me. First publication of the illustrated edition of Jurgen was indeed in 1921 by John Lane / The Bodley Head. So these plates should indeed be in the public domain.

As for the other illustrated editions, it might be helpful to know if any other publisher besides Robert M. McBride ever reprinted these plates. Since McBride declared bankruptcy in the 40s, there might be a good chance these later illustrations fall into the category of "published 1923 through 1963 with notice but copyright was not renewed" ... what do you think?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._McBride
http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

2lilithcat
jun 30, 2013, 1:39 pm

Stanford University Library's Special Collections has an archive of letters and drawings of Papé: http://findingaids.stanford.edu/xtf/view?docId=ead/mss/m0296.xml;chunk.id=header...

They may be able to help you.

3rainlights
jun 30, 2013, 1:43 pm

That was quick :) Thank you!

4elenchus
jun 30, 2013, 2:23 pm

Please keep us posted on the book, and if anything's available online regarding the conference and its proceedings, I'd be curious to look those up too.

5Crypto-Willobie
jul 4, 2013, 9:57 pm

>1 rainlights:
"As for the other illustrated editions, it might be helpful to know if any other publisher besides Robert M. McBride ever reprinted these plates."

Not sure if you mean here "other illustrated editions of Jurgen" or "other illustrated editions of books by Cabell." Covering all bases...

- McBride never reprinted the Pape illustrations from the 1921 Lane Jurgen. When McBride did an illustrated Jurgen in 1923 (reprinted 1924, 1926, 1927, 1929) he used illustrations by Ray F. Coyle (1885-1924). The Pape illustrations have been used in reprints by Dover (1977 and 2011) and Walking Lion Press (2009 http://www.librarything.com/work/51294/details/65958396 ).

- The 1923 illustrated edition of The High Place was the first Pape did for McBride. It was reprinted by Dover in 1978. I suppose this should come into public domain at the end of this year?

- I'm not aware that the other Pape-illustrated editions (Figures of Earth 1924, Cream of the Jest 1927, Silver Stallion 1928, Something About Eve 1929, Domnei 1930) have been reprinted. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperback reprints of the late 60s/early 70s used head and tail pieces and minor illustrations from the Pape editions but not the fullpage plates.

Perhaps Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. could give you more information on Pape permissions? See here: http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/pape.htm

6rainlights
aug 18, 2013, 1:34 pm

A late thank you and sorry I didn't drop by the last weeks. Life has been crazy and I'm off on vacation now -- but I will get back to this in September, write to everybody all of you suggested and keep you updated on the results and the conference proceedings!

> I'm not aware that the other Pape-illustrated editions (Figures of Earth 1924, Cream of the Jest 1927, Silver Stallion 1928, Something About Eve 1929, Domnei 1930) have been reprinted. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperback reprints of the late 60s/early 70s used head and tail pieces and minor illustrations from the Pape editions but not the fullpage plates.

Well, according to the bibliography on "The Silver Stallion" (http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/cabell_chron_main.html) it seems there have been reprints of all of these by The Bodley Head ... Since they are still in existence, more or less (as an imprint of Random House), I will probably write them first :)

Thank you again!

7Crypto-Willobie
Bewerkt: aug 19, 2013, 5:36 pm

Ah, yes, in a sense some of the Bodleys were 'reprints,' although in fact the UK illustrated Figures of Earth was published in Oct 1925, before the Dec 1925 first US edition -- so that makes the four McBride printings into 'reprints.' (I misspoke when I dated the illustrated FoE to 1924 in my previous post.)

Actually, I think we can regard these as more or less simultaneous editions issued for different geographical markets:
- The Bodley illustrated Cream of the Jest (?month, 1927) was made up from imported sheets of the Oct 1927 US edition.
- The Bodley illustrated Silver Stallion (Nov 1928) was issued only one month after the US (Oct 1928), and was also made up from imported sheets.
- The Bodley illustrated Something About Eve (Nov 1929) was also made up from imported sheets of the Sept 1929 US edition.
- The Bodley illustrated Domnei (Oct 1930) was also made up from imported sheets, from the US edition issued earlier the same month,

So in a significant way, these weren't reprints at all but the 'same' printings if not the same editions. The only differences were that the UK editions had variant gilt decorations on the spines and front covers, and John Lane's name on the spine and title page instead of Robert McBride's.

And of course Jurgen and High Place don't figure here, as each country had its own Jurgen illustrator (Pape, 1921, Bodley; Coyle, 1923, McBride) and the Pape High Place was a limited edition never issued in the UK. I did omit to mention one Pape reprint -- an obscure US reprint house called Main Road Books reprinted the illustrated High Place, undated but probably in the 1970s or 80s, and probably without permission: http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/bibliography/manuel/high_place/hp_g1.htm...

McBride and Bodley Head and Pape had a pretty symbiotic relationship in the 1920s -- aside from the shared illustrated editions, Pape was also doing jackets for Bodley's trade Cabells (but not for McBride's). I'd be surprised if the rump Bodley Head imprint at UK Random House could tell you anything about their illustration arrangements from the 1920s, but who knows. Jim Vadeboncoeur seems to use Pape's illustrations pretty freely on his webpage (cited previously) so I suspect he has some idea of the situation...

Good luck with your paper!

(edited to fix booboo)

8rainlights
okt 19, 2013, 12:45 pm

Again, thank you very much for the excellent and detailed information. I must admit I hadn't realized that the illustrated "High Place" was such a rarity (it sure explains the prices on abebooks ... it's the only Papé-illustrated novel still missing in my collection), and I never really had a look at the Coyle illustrations of "Jurgen", which have a very unique charm to them.

Anyway, I wanted to give you and everybody interested a quick update:

1. I wrote to the Special Collection at Stanford, and they gladly granted me permission "as owners of these materials". However, they added that "our permission is conditioned upon you having sought and received copyright permission from the copyright owners. If the text or image in question is under copyright, permission to publish should be sought from the owners of the rights, typically the creator or the heirs to his or her estate. All necessary permissions should be obtained before any publication occurs." Which reads a bit like a very polite way of saying "we have no idea about this, either, we just happen to own that stuff" :)

2. I also wrote to Dan Whitworth, who runs a little blog featuring the FoE illustrations at http://www.terrainvague.com/pape/foe_02.htm He basically said that he didn't know the answers to my questions and assumed the illustrations were all in the public domain. He also pointed me to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.

3. Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., however, didn't reply to my email.

4. The Bodley Head, London, didn't reply to my email.

I'll try to get in contact with some German publishers who printed Cabell's and Papé's works in the eighties, but probably the big question, ultimately, will be whether the editors of our proceedings are willing to take the risk of printing some of Papés plates from the later novels, or whether I'll restrict myself to the well-known illustrations from "Jurgen", which seem to be the safest bet in terms of copyright.

By the way, here are some very nice books illustrated by Papé, available online, which I discovered during my research: http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Pap%C3%A9%2C%20Frank%22

9elenchus
okt 19, 2013, 3:50 pm

And downloadable in various formats: thanks for that.

10rainlights
nov 23, 2013, 12:14 pm

I haven't made much progress on my quest for the legal legacy of Frank C. Papé yet. However, I discovered a beautifully illustrated edition of Anatole France's novel "Thaïs", published in 1926 by -- no surprise -- The Bodley Head. The plates look very, very much like the illustrations Papé did for Cabell's novels, which is kind of disturbing, since I would suspect France's style to be very different (maybe I'm mistaken?) Some Russian blogger put all of them online: http://book-graphics.blogspot.de/2013/10/thais-ill-frank-c-pape.html

11elenchus
nov 23, 2013, 4:05 pm

I've not yet read any France, but several times read of strong parallels in style between his works and Cabell's. Unclear if France was an influence, though.

12DCBlack
Bewerkt: nov 27, 2013, 10:01 am

>10 rainlights: Bodley Head published several Anatole France titles with illustrations by Frank Pape including Thais, The Well of Saint Claire, At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque, Penguin Island, and Mother of Pearl. In fact, these titles look almost like a matched set to the Bodley Head Cabell titles with similar black bindings with gold titles in addition to the full page plates and other chapter decorations by FP. I have read Thais and The Well of Saint Claire. While the satire doesn't seem as strong to me as Cabell, both have fantastic emements similar to Cabell. In France's works, demons appear in physical form to tempt or torture priests, and the human frailties of the priests are often exposed.

ETA: Also, I think that both authors works reveal a somewhat cynical view of religion in general.