Cotmania. Vol. XII. 1937

{Cutting from Faber and Faber's Spring List of books, 1937}
FABER AND FABER SPRING BOOKS

The Life of John Sell Cotman
SYDNEY KITSON

It is one of the difficulties of publishing that a book about an artist is generally taken by the public to be a book about art. We want, therefore, to stress the fact that Mr. Kitson's book is a biography. It narrates the chequered career of a man of genius, born in a provincial English town, who became a great artist; and it is a book which everybody who enjoys reading about the lives of real people will find of absorbing interest, whether he cares much or little about the history of English painting.

Mr. Kitson has had access to a large number of letters written by Cotman at various periods of his life, and has used them with great effect, to round out a story never before fully told. His book relates, in all its human detail, the life of a man who rose above his natural environment, and yet was continually betrayed into disaster by the defects of his own temperament.

A fuller account of this very beautiful as well as interesting book will be found on page 46.

Size 9½ x 6½ inches. With about 160 reproductions in collotype. 25s

Faber's Spring List. 1937.