According to Spare bibliographer Clive Harper, the original 'edition deluxe' from Catalpa Press was to be issued in an edition of 200 copies on fine, hand-made paper. Due to the amount of unbound sheets that have surfaced over the years, it is estimated that around 25-30 were all that were bound. Many of the remaining sheets were acquired over the years by the Teitan Press in order to produce this new deluxe edition, as well as a standard edition. Austin Osman Spare completed this series of drawings in the spring of 1925 during a particularly turbulent period of his life in which he abandoned more commercial artistic styles and instead immersed himself in the creation of several series of his darkly-visionary "automatic drawings'. As much as Spare tried he could not find a publisher for it. The original volume from Catalpa Press (1973) was the first edition in book form. It (and this volume) was reproduced at the exact size of the original work. The title page Spare drew for this unusual sketchbook reads: ' A book of Automatic drawing containing: calligraphic titles, signatures & other devices together with Self portraits & Allegorical frontispiece'. There are 12 full page drawings on rectos only plus calligraphic renderings of a title page, contents page, a page of 'signatures & sigils' (in black and green inks), and a "finis" page (in black and brown inks), each with accompanying drawings.