George Bacovia (1881-1957) and Dimitrie Stelaru (1917-1971) represent two generations in the long line of Romanian Francophile Symbolists. Although both Bacovia and Stelaru took inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe and the French Symbolists and were also touched by early-Expressionism, the two countrymen were miles apart in upbringing, cultural background, character…
Tailpieces are decorative elements used in printing to mark the end of a text or chapter. In the elegant hand made edition Finis Sea Urchin compiles 30 tailpieces that were done in the 19th and 20th centuries by various artists, ranging from Thomas Bewick to Alfred Kubin and George Grosz. The tailpieces have been printed single…
August Stramm (1874-1915) was born in Münster and educated in Aachen, Germany. After he had graduated from grammar school, Stramm held various positions in the German Postdienst and regularly travelled between Germany and the USA after having been promoted to a position in the Seepostdienst in 1897. Stramm married journalist Else Krafft in 1902 and moved to Berlin three years later. In the German capital…
Albert Ehrenstein was born to Hungarian parents in Vienna in 1886. Despite his poor Jewish working-class background he was admitted to the renowned Piaristengymnasium and was able to study History, Geography and Art History at the University of Vienna. After having written his History thesis in 1910, he focused on a literary career, an ambition that had developed during his years…
The Sea Urchin pamphlet The Fifth Day is a passage lifted from Edgar Allan Poe’s tale Manuscript Found in a Bottle. The tale was first published in 1833 after it had won an award of $50 in a contest organised by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. The version published by Sea Urchin is how it later appeared in Poe’s own Broadway Journal in 1845.Manuscript Found in a Bottle is a tale in which a drifting narrator describes how his ship sets sail from Batavia to the Sunda islands in the Malay Archipelago…