WASSON, Valentina Pavlovna and R. Gordon WASSON. Mushrooms, Russia and History.

WASSON, Valentina Pavlovna and R. Gordon WASSON. Mushrooms, Russia and History.History of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms WASSON, Valentina Pavlovna and R. Gordon WASSON. Mushrooms, Russia and History. [Verona: Stamperia Valdonega for:] New York: Pantheon Books. 1957. Two volumes, 4to. Original green grey cloth with gilt red lettering pieces to spines, in original glassine wrappers and grey cloth slipcase; I: pp. xxi, [1 (blank)], 212, [4]; II: pp. xii, [213]433, [3]; 82 plates by Daniel Jacomet after watercolours by Jean Henri Fabre,

History of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms

WASSON, Valentina Pavlovna and R. Gordon WASSON. Mushrooms, Russia and History. [Verona: Stamperia Valdonega for:] New York: Pantheon Books. 1957.

Two volumes, 4to. Original green-grey cloth with gilt red lettering-pieces to spines, in original glassine wrappers and grey cloth slipcase; I: pp. xxi, [1 (blank)], 212, [4]; II: pp. xii, [213]–433, [3]; 82 plates by Daniel Jacomet after watercolours by Jean-Henri Fabre, many in colour, with captioned tissue guards, 28 in-text illustrations; slipcase a little marked, glassine wrappers with portions missing from spines, spines slightly sunned, otherwise a very good set; presentation inscription to vol. I flyleaf ‘We gladly inscribe this book for Sara Delano Redmond, with affection’, signed by both authors and dated New York, 16 June 1958 (see below).

First edition of this encyclopaedic history of hallucinogenic mushroom use, extensively illustrated with reproductions of watercolours by naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, no. 94 of a limited edition of 512. This set was presented by both authors to Sara Delano Redmond, (1894–1983), trustee of the Walters Art Museum, a first cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and wife of Roland Livingston Redmond, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Despite the title, Russia is only one pit-stop on this tour through the fungal traditions of Europe and South America as they look at varying cultural responses to mushrooms, positing the idea that the mycophilia of the Slavic people and the mycophobia of the Anglo-Saxons stem from different folkloric traditions. The Wassons’ research draws upon material held by the New York Public Library as well as contributions by Roman Jakobson, Samuel H. Cross Professor of Slavic Studies at Harvard; René Lafon, Basque chair at the University of Bordeaux; and, curiously, the poet Robert Graves, who provided ‘the missing link [...] in order to round out our own conjecture concerning the death of the Emperor Claudius [...] We believe that by re-reading the age-worn texts in the light of present-day knowledge, we can state with some assurance exactly what lethal agents were used’ (vol. I, p. xix).

R. Gordon Wasson was Vice-President of J. P. Morgan, a banker whose greatest contribution was in the field of entheogenic fungi; his Russian wife Valentina was a paediatrician. It was she, a keen mushroom forager from childhood, who led her husband into mycology, at first casually but then with increasing scientific and ethnological rigour. They became seriously interested in edible mushrooms on their honeymoon in the Catskills in 1927 and were later the first Westerners to participate in a Mazatec mushroom ritual in Mexico, on a trip covertly funded by the CIA. Their Mexico trip was made famous by a photo story in TIME in 1957 (‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom’), but the present work, their first full-length book, explores it in far greater detail.

Wasson had two species of psychoactive mushrooms named after him and provided the specimens used by Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, to identify the chemical structure of the active compounds psilocybin and psilocin. Timothy Leary’s reading of the Wassons’ early research into these mushrooms led to his experimentation with and promotion of LSD as a consciousness-expanding agent.

This lavishly produced work was printed on handmade Magnani paper and bound by Torriani in Milan, with the illustrations in colour and collotype produced by Daniel Jacomet in Paris.

SKU: 2123906