The System of Landor's Cottage: A Pendant to Poe's Last Story

Rodney Graham's The System of Landor's Cottage: A Pendant to Poe's Last Story is the most ambitious of the textual interventions that contributed to Graham's emergence onto the international art scene in the 1980s. Part 'pataphysical investigation, part Roussellian exercise, the text begins with Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Landor's Cottage: A Pendant to 'The Domain of Arnheim,'" which describes a waylaid traveller's encounter with an uncannily pristine landscape and cabin in the Hudson River Valley. Into this short tale, which numbers less than twenty pages in most editions, Graham inserts an entire novel centered around an annex to Poe's original structure that houses a fantastical machine. Through a complex set of nested tales, the origins of the machine become clearer but no less magical, and readers will be held rapt by accounts of architectural wonders, a mysterious cipher, and the romance of impossible science.

Second edition of the same title first published in 1987. With a preface by Rodney Graham and in appendix essays by Jamie Hilder and Robert Linsley.

Book. Offset printing, Printed by Cultura, Wetteren.

Edition of 600 copies. The cover is printed in 4 distinct colors to form 4 sets of books numbered from 1 to 150.