New condition, straight from the publisher. Extremely scarce in the trade, there being currently only two copies available and beginning at $1,100.
Esther was a real mensch. Spectacular books need spectacular homes and loving hands. The Book of Esther and the Song of Songs are the only two books of the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God–not even once. Esther’s book mentions feasts more than two dozen times, spirituality and salvation are implied in spades but not mentioned. The Book of Esther has a supremely complicated and fascinating history to it. It is known also as “The Scroll,” a book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible, one of the five scrolls to be found in it and portions of which were absorbed into the “Christian” Old Testament. A Jewish woman born as Hadassah in Persia, she came to be known as Esther, she became Queen of Persia, and she averted disaster for her people. Esther’s story, passed down orally and eventually put down onto a scroll, became the fulcrum of the Jewish festival of Purim, which duly and justly celebrates the existence and thriving of the Jews in Persia in the 5th century B.C.E. under the King Xerxes I.
This exemplar is a First Edition thus, a Special Limited Edition of the Esther Scroll, based upon the manuscript scroll held by the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek in Hanover, Germany. That scroll dates to somewhere between 1740 and 1746, and it measures over 20 feet in length. Lavishly illustrated and containing a contemporary German version of the story of Esther, the biblical scholar Falk Wiesemann has provided compelling evidence that the artist of the so-called Hanover Scroll of Esther was Wolf Leib Katz Poppers. Popper was a Jewish scribe and illustrator from Hildesheim.Plentiful images are available on request.
This exemplar was produced from a copy that “was produced for a member of a small, affluent community of Turkish Jews who, after 1718, were permitted to live and trade freely in Vienna, while still remaining subjects of the Sultan of Turkey.” This Limited Edition of only 1,746 copies was published by Taschen, Koln, Germany, from 2015, this being #0357, and it comprises a facsimile scroll housed in a handcrafted walnut-veneer display case. This copy provides a continuous text over 21 feet in length, one that unfurls from right to left from a leather-bound cylinder. It comes with a clothbound and gilt-edged commentary volume by Falk Wiesemann, truly a scholar extraordinaire. From the publisher, “Falk Wiesemann studied history and German language and literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. From 1979 to 2009 he taught at the Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf and was Professor of Modern History. He is a specialist in German-Jewish history, the history of Jewish books and 20th-century German social history.” Complete with an introductory essay, the biblical text of the Book of Esther. It is an extraordinary book and Book. It is produced in quadrulingual fashion, too, featuring English, French, German and Hebrew. Added in is a fold-out sheet with an overview of all the illustrations.
Offered by Structure, Verses, Agency Books
$495
To purchase, contact svafinebooks@gmail.com
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