1450-1950

Originally published in 1929, Bob Brown's 1450-1950 is a collection of hand-written, "optical" poems." This parodic set of "scratches" extends and challenges the legacy Gutenberg's standardized type set and blurs the boundaries between scribbles, art, and literature. In this new edition, scholar and Brown biographer Craig Saper offers a new introduction to the work with several new contributions from artists, poets, and critics paying homage to Brown's impact on the Beat movement, LANGUAGE poetry, and the field of digital modernism.


About the Author
Robert Carlton Brown (1886-1959) was an American author, journalist, publisher, and collector. Born in Chicago. Brown wrote pulp fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, avant-garde publications, and experimented with a book of visual poetry; he also contributed pieces to various magazines and newspapers in New York City and established journals in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and London. In 1929, he and his wife temporarily settled in France where they became involved in the expatriate literary community in Paris. While there, he established Roving Eye Press to promote a reading machine that he invented. His literary works include What Happened to Mary (1913), The Readies (1930), Globe-Gliding (1930), Words (1931), Gems (1931), Readies for Bob Brown's Machine (1931), and Nomadness (1931). He also wrote or co-wrote a number of best-selling cookbooks, including The European Cookbook (1936), 10,000 Snacks (1937), The Wine Cook Book (1941), and The Complete Book of Cheese (1955).