FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York, NY, October 7, 2014―Simon & Schuster announced today that it will publish a new book by Bob Dylan entitled The Lyrics: Since 1962, on October 28, 2014.
The Lyrics is the first comprehensive, rigorously annotated, and definitive collection of Bob Dylan’s lyrics to be published. It grew out of an unprecedented collaboration over many years between Mr. Dylan and a team of editors led by Sir Christopher Ricks, Warren Professor of the Humanities and codirector of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, the editor of works by T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as a member of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.
The Lyrics: Since 1962 traces the evolution of Dylan’s artistry by documenting and comparing his original compositions to the recorded songs we’ve come to know and love, including the subtle changes he’s made throughout years of live performances. World English rights were acquired by Simon & Schuster president and publisher, Jonathan Karp, from Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency.
Of the collection, Christopher Ricks says: “For fifty years, all the world has delighted in Bob Dylan’s books of words and more than words: provocative, mysterious, touching, baffling, not-to-be-pinneddown, intriguing, and a reminder that genius is free to do as it chooses. And, again and again, these are not the words that he sings on the initially released albums. This book changes things, giving us the words from officially released studio and live recordings, as well as selected variant lyrics and revisions to these, recent revisions and retrospective ones; and, from the archives, words that, till now, have not been published.”
Jonathan Karp comments: “Bob Dylan is one of the most important artists of our time. His work is sometimes compared to Shakespeare’s, and when I held this book in my hands, I couldn’t help thinking that what Christopher Ricks and his colleagues have produced will come to be regarded as the First Folio of Dylan studies. This is an extraordinary work – truly a collector’s item.”
At 1,034 pages, featuring full-color original album art throughout, this special edition of The Lyrics will be limited to one printing of 3,000 copies that will retail for $200 each. The publisher will also produce 50 boxed, numbered editions signed by Mr. Dylan to be sold exclusively through a dedicated website, www. dylansignedbook.com, or through a customer service line, 1-877-409-1028. The price of the signed editions is $5,000.
One of the most celebrated songwriters and performers of all time, with over 125 million albums sold around the world, Bob Dylan has been awarded the French Legion of Honor, a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. He has been long rumored to be under consideration for the Nobel Prize. His memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, was published in 2004 and spent nearly a year on the New York Times bestseller list.
Simon & Schuster, a part of CBS Corporation, is a global leader in the field of general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for consumers of all ages, across all printed, electronic, and audio formats. Its divisions include Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Simon & Schuster Audio, Simon & Schuster Digital, and international companies in Australia, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.
Contact:
Cary Goldstein
VP/Executive Director of Publicity Senior Editor Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
212-698-1122
Cary.Goldstein@simonandschuster.com
The Lyrics. Since 1962 Bob Dylan edited with diligence by Christopher Ricks, Lisa Nemrow, and Julie Nemrow. As set down, as sung, and as sung again. Copyright © 2004, 2014 by Bob Dylan. Designed by Un-Gyve Ltd.
The Roger Lonsdale archive, at Balliol College, Oxford, includes his reflections, in 2005, on his poetry, with lists of his ninety poems—alphabetically by first lines, and chronologically—as well as his notebooks as a poet; and, at that time, he noted, in reference to these sixteen poems from Un-Gyve Press in a numbered, limited edition of seventy-five: “At present the following seem worth preserving for one reason or another.”