Ben; Aubrey BEARDSLEY ( illustrator ); Vincent O'SULLIVAN. Volpone: or The Foxe. A new edition …

by JONSON

£400 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

‘One of the Strongest Things I Have Ever Done’ (Beardsley) JONSON, Ben; [Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator)]. Volpone: or The Foxe. A New Edition with a Critical Essay on the Author by Vincent O'Sullivan and a Frontispiece Five Initial Letters and a Cover Design Illustrative and Decorative by Aubrey Beardsley together with an Eulogy of the Artist by Robert Ross. New York: John Lane. 1898. 4to. Original green cloth, ornate gilt decoration and lettering to upper board, gilt lettering to spine, largely uncut; pp. xlv, [1], 193, [1], eight illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley including reproduction of cover design, frontispiece, and six illuminated initials; endpapers a little browned; very good copy. First edition, the American sub-issue, no. 193 of 1000 copies, of Beardsley’s final, uncompleted commission. This issue appears without Beardsley's 'Puck on Pegasus' device in gilt to the rear boardcover, although it does appear on the title- page. Both Samuels Lasner and the book's own subtitle call for five initial letters, but there are six, one for each act and one for the ‘Argument’, as detailed on the list of illustrations (p. xi). Beardsley was commissioned by Leonard Smithers to illustrate this book, originally conceived as an edition de luxe with twenty four plates, frontispiece, initial letters and small drawings, in November 1897. His health was already failing due to tuberculosis and when he died in March 1898 he had only produced the illustrations seen here. Despite his fading

• Binding: Hardcover

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