The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

340pp, with page decorations.  Quarter bound in brown linen over brown paper-covered boards with gilt decoration on front and gilt lettering front and spine.  8vo.  Covers are worn, rubbed at edges, rounded on corners and spine ends, with some minor fraying at spine ends.  Text block edges toned and soft.  Slightly loose.  Internally some mild and occasional spotting and toning, a couple of strained gutters.

First published in London in 1890, this edition was published anonymously.  The author is, and was well-known to be, James McNeill Whister, the America artist  (1834-1903).  The book is in part a response to and in part a transcript of the libel case that Whistler brought against the English art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900).  Ruskin had referred in a review to Whistler's painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold - the Falling Rocket, as 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face'.  As well as Whistler's letters to various newspapers, the volume also contains his remarkable 1885 lecture 'Ten o'Clock' in which he expounds his own views on the meaning and purpose of art.