Aubrey Reproductions of Eleven Designs Omitted from the First Edition of Le Morte Darthur … [ Half-title :] Morte Darthur Portfolio.

by BEARDSLEY

£1,500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Previously Omitted Arthurian Illustrations BEARDSLEY, Aubrey Reproductions of Eleven Designs Omitted from the First Edition of Le Morte Darthur … [ Half-title :] Morte Darthur Portfolio. [ Edinburgh: Turnbull Spears for ] London: J. M. Dent Sons Ltd. 1927. 4to. Original calf-backed boards with vellum sides, floral design by Beardsley blocked to upper board in gilt, spine lettered directly in gilt, top-edge gilt, the others uncut; pp. [2 (blank, limitation)], 45, [3], with half-title; half-title within woodcut border, woodcut Dent device to title, initials, headpieces, cartouches, and 14 illustrations by Beardsley; light soiling and a few small scuffs to boards, short splits to joints unobtrusively repaired; slight offsetting to blank versos and to colophon, else internally very good; a handsome copy. Beardsley’s Morte d’Arthur Portfolio , no. 19 of 300 copies on handmade paper, issued in conjunction with the 1927 third Beardsley-illustrated edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Birth, Life, and Acts of King Arthur. The Portfolio contains fourteen drawings by Beardsley (intended as chapter headings but omitted from the 1893–94 first edition), an enlarged reproduction of his ‘Merlin’ drawing, an unused front wrapper design (adhered to p. 43), and a reproduction of the front wrapper as issued. The publisher J.M. Dent had planned, at the end of the nineteenth century, to create a lavish and beautiful illustrated version of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur , in a similar vein to Morris’s Kelmscot

• Binding: Hardcover

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