The Arion Press edition, edited and designed by Andrew Hoyem, is both historically allusive and keenly contemporary. The type is Suburban French, a face cut about 1911 and adapted for Monotype composition. It may have been based on a Didot type from around 1804 and bears resemblances to the elegant Romain du Roi of Grandjean for the Imprimerie Royale in 1702. The initial letters and display type on the title page are Gallia, produced by Lanston Monotype in 1928. This face was chosen because of its striping of thin-thick-thin lines and is printed in rose ink because of the preference of the author for bed-hangings in this color and pattern. That scheme is repeated on the binding cloth, with alternating rose and gray stripes. Rose, or pink, in one’s surroundings, de Maistre advises, ensures happiness. The printing is by letterpress, on Arches Text, a French mouldmade paper. The book is in a small format, 8-1/4 by 5-7/8 inches, 152 numbered pages plus 32 unnumbered pages for the illustrations, totaling 184 pages.

The illustrations are by the architect Ross Anderson. They are sixteen photographs of small models of the room, its furnishings, and the author’s travelling coat, taken with a cell-phone digital camera. These low-resolution pictures are printed on translucent UV/Ultra II paper by offset lithography. The result is an elusive evocation of an interior that becomes the vast expanse of the interior of the mind.

Anderson has also created a housing for the book. This is a box with portholes that allow the viewer to look inside. Light through the ceiling of the box illumines walls and floors of an abstract apartment that serves as the lid to the tray holding the book. It is an architectural model that might be called “the second story”. A portion of the book edition is offered with this box as an optional feature.

The edition of the book is limited to 300 numbered copies for sale and 26 lettered copies hors de commerce. The edition of the box is limited to 30 for sale, numbered in Arabic numerals. and 5 for the artist and 5 for the publisher, numbered in Roman numerals. Both book and box are signed by Ross Anderson. The price of the book in the box is $1,200. Sold out.
The price of the book is $450.

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