The Little Big Book of Love [Hardcover]

Lena Tabori (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2000

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The Little Big Book of Love" is the most adorable, chunky valentine ever. There have been many successful love anthologies before this one, but none so complete, timeless, and delightful, and none in such a beautifully designed format. This great little fat love anthology is chock-full of the best of everything, including:

• Stories and excerpts from novels and plays by such favorite authors as Jane Austen, E. E. Cummings, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and William Shakespeare
• Love letters of famous historical couples such as Winston and Clementine Churchill, Napoleon and Josephine, And Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
• Love poems by such renowned poets as Lord Byron, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, and Maya Angelou
• Recipes for aphrodisiac menus and treats to share with the one you love--including a Forgiveness Breakfast, Chocolate Truffles, and Luscious Lemon Hearts
• Lyrics to some of the greatest love songs of our time, from Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin'' to Johnny Mercer's "Something's Gotta Give''

More than 200 lavish illustrations, including 100 full-color, early twentieth-century images.There have been many successful love anthologies before this one, but none so complete, timeless, and delightful, and none so beautifully designed. This great little fat love anthology is chock-full of stories, poems, songs, letters, and the best recipes ever, including:

* Poetry of William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Butler Yeats, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, T. S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Nikki Giovanni, and many, many more!
* The best romantic recipes, with his-and-heraphrodisiac dinner menus, a forgiveness breakfast, cookie valentines, and a heart-shaped strawberry meringue shortcake
* Love letters from famous historical figures such as Winston Churchill, John and Abigail Adams, Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre . . . and many equally passionate, entertaining, and eloquent declarations
* Love songs like "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," "Our Love Is Here to Stay," and "I Only Have Eyes for You."

Lavishly illustrated with nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century illustrations, this charming book will remind you of the simplicity, integrity, and importance of love. There have been many successful love anthologies before this one, but none so complete, timeless, and delightful, and none so beautifully designed. This great little fat love anthology is chock-full of stories, poems, songs, letters, and the best recipes ever, including:

* Poetry of William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Butler Yeats, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, T. S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Nikki Giovanni, and many, many more!
* The best romantic recipes, with his-and-her aphrodisiac dinner menus, a forgiveness breakfast, cookie valentines, and a heart-shaped strawberry meringue shortcake
* Love letters from famous historical figures such as Winston Churchill, John and Abigail Adams, Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre . . . and many equally passionate, entertaining, and eloquent declarations
* Love songs like "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," "Our Love Is Here to Stay," and "I Only Have Eyes for You."

Lavishly illustrated withnineteenth- and early-twentieth-century illustrations, this charming book will remind you of the simplicity, integrity, and importance of love.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lena Tabori is publisher, director, and founder of Welcome Enterprises, Inc., a publishing and packaging company based in New York and San Francisco.

She has spent her professional life in publishing, beginning at Harry N. Abrams in 1967, which she later left to create Welcome and to cofound Stewart, Tabori & Chang, a publishing company. Love is an enduring subject for Tabori, who has previously edited Kisses, published by Turner Publishing, in 1991, and Love: A Celebration in Art and Literature with Jane Lahr for STC in 1982.

Lena Tabori lives in San Francisco and New York City with her significant other, Frank.

Natasha Tabori Fried is managing editor at Welcome Enterprises. She was formerly an associate producer at the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and Fox News Channel.

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword

It is my birthday. I am fifty-five years old. This is my third love book and the second one edited with someone else. My first was with my closest friend. This time I am working with my daughter, Natasha Tabori Fried. The timing is perfect. I am deeply in love again.

Two years ago I was in Kauai to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of a dear San Francisco friend. He had invited ten of us to share a house on Hanalei Bay for a week. One of the ten was his newly single best friend. Well, the daily rainbows, the rain on the roof at night, the moon in the sky, and the phosphorescent fish in the water (making stars above and below) certainly created the perfect backdrop. But our union, Franco's and mine, goes on. Our families and friends have merged. We have a life together in San Francisco and in New York. He's a technology guy and I'm a publisher, an editor, and sometimes, a writer. We're not the same at all. But we pair well.

I was reading a poem of Rumi's at one point this last year, as I flew back and forth between the two coasts:

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you are not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

And I laughed, thinking how wonderfully specific someone else's experience could be to my own. This book is filled with such recurring recognition.

My daughter--now twenty-eight--and I read, talked, and shared with each other material that we loved. She rediscovered Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. I discovered Nikki Giovanni and Simon Ortiz. We tossed anything we didn't both love or anything that the delicious, merry, and very turn-of-the-century illustrations didn't resonate to. The images now marry brilliantly to everything from The Velveteen Rabbit to Napoleon's jealous letters to his wife, Josephine, to the songs of Cole Porter and the Gershwins, to the plays of Shakespeare. They adore their association with the recipes, and soar with the poems. The illustrations are key to this volume's charm.

This book believes that love is here to stay. It is packed with all the diversity that the Western world has to offer on the subject. Johnny Mercer's Something's Gotta Give is certainly different than Robert Frost's Never Again Would Birds' Songs Be the Same and, artistically, bears no resemblance to e.e. cummings' Somewhere I Have Never Travelled. But each of these creators is celebrating the beloved. Mark Twains ever-perfect Adam and Eve ("We?" says Adam. "Where did I get that word?--I remember now--the new creature uses it.") sets the tone for the books commitment. "He" discovers "she" in this divine piece and, complicated as the discovery was and often is, he cannot live without her.

This fat little book is overflowing with love. It is in love with love. Love at its deepest, highest, most touching place. Oh, yes, there is some obsession: Cole Porter's Nigbt and Day speaks of it, Sarah Bernhardt celebrates it, and the aphrodisiac dinner even attempts to instigate it. And there is certainly passion.

But there is also tenderness and humor. Love has a way of bringing everyone to the same place, and when Queen Victoria confides her love for her future husband, Albert, you come to the heart of the book. You will find this commitment spoken of in endless ways: in Robert Bly's exquisite Such Different Wants, and in the amazing letters that Winston Churchill, John Adams, and Dylan Thomas write to their wives.

Finally, there are the perfect recipes: chocolate mousse, fortune cookies complete with suggested fortunes, and unbelievable lemon hearts. A Forgiveness Breakfast will occasionally be in order and it, too, is here. But mainly, primarily, there is our hope that you will find this vibrant little book filled with profound and wonderful surprises.

     To you, from Natasha and me,
                               Lena Tabori

Copyright © 1999 by Welcome Enterprises, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (January 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688174159
• ISBN-13: 978-0688174156
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 6.8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #161,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

LENA TABORI is the founder of Welcome Enterprises and is currently Welcome's CEO and the Publisher of Welcome Books, the imprint under which the company publishes illustrated books.

She began her career in 1967 at Harry N. Abrams, leaving there is 1980 as their first female vice president (VP, Marketing and Special Sales). It was also the place she began her own editorial book development. At Abrams, she developed and edited MASAAI, by photographer Carol Beckwith, as well as putting together the NORMAN ROCKWELL'S CHRISTMAS BOOK. She also created a gift line called Abrams Artpapers and was responsible for organizing the hugely successful licensing program for GNOMES, a book which sold close to two million copies.

She left to create Welcome Enterprises as well as to co-found Stewart, Tabori & Chang, the illustrated book publisher (where she only remained until 1982). From 1982 to 1990, she largely devoted herself to creating books at Welcome and selling them to publishers, including Judith Levy's best-selling GRANDMOTHER REMEMBERS (Stewart, Tabori & Chang); the award-winning GLORIOUS AMERICAN FOOD by Christopher Idone (Random House); and LOVE: A CELEBRATION IN ART AND LITERATURE, which she co-edited with Jane Lahr (STC). She also produced for television an animated special for ABC television, Ziggy's Gift, based on the Tom Wilson cartoon character and directed by Richard Williams. For her role as producer and executive producer of Ziggy's Gift, she was awarded an Emmy in 1983.

In 1987, Welcome began packaging books for Turner Broadcasting and she was closely involved in the development of their publishing division, for which she negotiated a distribution deal with Andrews McMeel in 1989. For Turner, she personally conceived edited and produced Kisses and MGM: When the Lion Roars which was written by Peter Hay.

In 1991, Lena moved to San Francisco to become president and publisher of CollinsPublishersSanFrancisco. During the year and a half she spent there, Lena created fifty new titles, including A DAY IN THE LIFE OF HOLLYWOOD. In 1993, she returned to Stewart, Tabori & Chang as their president and publisher. During the next four years, she published more than 200 new titles; created a gift line of calendars, journals, and albums; and more than doubled STC's revenues, making it once again one of the most significant illustrated book publishers in the United States.

In 1997, Lena returned to Welcome full-time and she and her partner Clark Wakabayashi made Welcome Books their official publishing imprint. In 2005, she arranged for Welcome Books to be distributed by Random House. She also co-created the first two titles in the successful LITTLE BIG BOOK series: THE LITTLE BIG BOOK OF CHRISTMAS (with Alice Wong) and THE LITTLE BIG BOOK OF LOVE (with Natasha Fried), which were both published by William Morrow. Since then, Lena has been the co-editor of many of the subsequent LITTLE BIG BOOKS, including MOMS and DADS, all published by Welcome Books. There are now a total of 27, only a few of which are out of print.

A native of Sweden, Lena lives in East Hampton and New York with Frank Rehor. She has two daughters, Natasha and Katrina, both of whom left television careers to become partners at Welcome Books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gift for your sweetheart or for yourself, February 5, 2000

By 

Kimberly Borrowdale (Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Little Big Book of Love (Hardcover)

THE LITTLE BIG BOOK OF LOVE, which measures seven by seven inches but is an inch and a half thick, is a marvelous gift for your sweetheart (or yourself!) to be kept on a nightstand or coffee table--perfect for reading aloud or for solitary indulgence. Including both familiar standards not-so-commonly found works, this volume is filled with poems (Shakespeare to cummings to Gillom), story & play excerpts (JANE EYRE to THE VELVETEEN RABBIT), songs (Cole Porter and the Gershwins), recipes (Honey Figs, Seduction Salad, Sinful Chocolate Fondue), letters (Napoleon, the Brownings, E.B. White), and 19th century illustrations (cupids, Victorian lovers, hearts, flowers, and doves). To complete the package are a table of contents and a woven-in red ribbon bookmark to find and mark one's favorites (opening to a random page and reading is fun, too). This is a quality book of quality literature to last as long as your love.

Kimberly Borrowdale Under the Covers Book Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love Is Here To Stay, February 16, 2002

By 

Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Little Big Book of Love (Hardcover)

Treat yourself to this chunky Valentine filled with the most delicious and timeless tributes to love. You can read the intimate love letters of such famous couples as Napolean and Josephine, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Isadora Duncan and Gordon Craig, and many more. You'll also savor excerpts from famous stories and plays such as Pride and Prejudice, The Velveteen Rabbit, the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and much more. My favorite section is the love poems, thirty hearfelt selections including the flawless "To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet as well as works by Shakespeare, Yeats, Lord Byron, and more romantic souls.

But don't think of this as just a literary anthology. Besides being one of the best in that genre, it also includes tempting meals as a prelude to a night of love. Complete aphrodisiac meals plus tempting desserts like the ultimate chocolate mousse and lemon hearts are guaranteed to keep the Valentine feeling year-long. You'll also find a recipe for fortune cookies which allows you to put in your own message. The recipe is footnoted with lots of suggestions to get your mind brainstorming, like "Birds do it, bees do it, we'll do it tonight" or any other messages you'd like to convey.

A final section includes love songs from the likes of Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, the Gershwins, and others. Of course, for days after reading these lyrics, I found myself constantly humming "I Only Have Eyes for You" by Al Dubin and Harry Warren.

Every page is illustrated with full-color images, over half from the early twentieth-century. They enhance the words, even those from people I never thought of as particularly romantic (Woodrow Wilson, e.e. cummings, John Adams, to name a few). So nice to know that love is truly a universal feeling that touches us all!

This anthology is a pure delight, guaranteed to keep love in your plans 365 days a year.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful valentine's day gift/ gift to a loved one, February 6, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Little Big Book of Love (Hardcover)

This is a compilation of poems, classic excerpts from plays and stories, words from popular songs, sweet tasting recipes, love letters, short-short stories, and illustrations that focus on love as a theme. The poets, storytellers, and playwrights represent a who's who of English literature to include Shakespeare (his sonnets), Twain, Joyce, Dumas, and Angelou among other notables. The love letters include Churchill, Napoleon, Darwin (an extract from his famous Journal), and Kafka, etc. The songs are older classics.

The collection is fun, well designed, and can be leisurely read in no particular order as desired by the reader. Cupid struck pay dirt with this wonderful collection that will brighten up anyone's day. THE LITTLE BIG BOOK OF LOVE makes a wonderful unique Valentine's Day present that will not lie on a coffee table, as the recipient will relish the wide variety of tributes to the power of love.

Harriet Klausner