Collections of an Only Child: Seventy Years a Bibliophile, the Library of Justin G. Schiller

(New York, ca. 1950). Original maquette for Steig's The Agony in the Kindergarten. 8vo. Comprising 222 numbered pages of early original pencil and ink sketches by Steig for the work; heavily annotated by him noting placement of images and captions; with typed slips for prelims mounted at front; three pages with mounted photostats of his illustrations. Original black leatherette sketch book, stamped "Sketch Book" in gilt on front board; scattered light wear.

Lot includes an additional 71 finished loose pen and ink and graphite drawings for the book (including two in colored pencil); some mounted to sheets; five signed by Steig; seven loose photostats of same. Each image with typed caption at bottom; each heavily annotated with printing notations, by Steig; most sheets with pencil notations on verso, some with discarded pencil and pen and ink sketches on same, by Steig.

The original maquette for beloved American cartoonist William Steig's harrowing adult book on the traumas of childhood, The Agony in the Kindergarten. One of his most important and emotionally complex works, it explores the effects of adult repression on childhood development. Steig's stark and expressively disturbing black and white drawings, shown here in their earlier and more finished states, depict children in a variety of grotesque forms, and are coupled with insensitive and often cruel remarks that adults make about children ("That brat needs a good spanking," "Shut up!," "What the hell does she want now", and "I need that kid like I need a hole in the head"). Dedicated to controversial Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Wilhelm Reich, whom Steig was a lifelong acolyte of, and whose influence is palpable throughout. "The surreal drawings of The Agony in the Kindergarten were perhaps (Steig's) most brilliant breakthrough into a purer kind of art, but his representations of childhood have always implied a continuity with adult experience; children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us" (John Updike, "Introduction," in The World of William Steig, 1998, p. 6).

Lot also includes a first edition copy of The Agony in the Kindergarten (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950; in price-clipped dust-jacket).