egan beresford lou s pierre (2 Ergebnisse)

First edition of this translation by Charles Hope Lumley. Royal octavo. 312 pages. One of 1125 copies on Batchelor hand-made paper, this being unnumbered. Colour illustrations by Beresford Egan. Black buckram-backed paper boards. Laid in is a Fuller d'Arch Smith catalogue of Fortune Press titles. On the front pastedown is a bookplate designed by Beresford Egan of a nude lady in high heels rather worryingly stepping on manuscripts and books.Gilt titles on spine a bit dull. Near fine in near-fine dustwrapper.

First edition, first impression, in the scarce dust jacket, number 80 of 1,275 copies; the first 75 copies were printed on heavy unbleached handmade paper, with the rest printed on Kelmscott handmade paper. Pierre Louÿs, known for his erotic, lesbian, and classical themes, wrote these decadent sketches under the guise of translating the works of Lucian; Louÿs foreword, in which he outlines the circumstances surrounding his "translation" and Lucian's historical contexts, lends credence to this premise. The Deco artist Beresford Egan was a prolific illustrator of erotic works, and Louÿs's "highly conflicted and ambivalent sexual politics clearly serve[d] as a highly useful framework for understanding Egan's brand of post-Victorian Decadent eroticism" (Mahoney, p. 182). The Fortune Press specialized in gay erotica, and was founded by Reginald Caton in 1924; a decade later, Caton was prosecuted and found guilty for publishing obscene works. Kristin Mahoney, Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015. Octavo. Original blue quarter cloth, marbled sides, spine lettered in gilt, edges untrimmed. With illustrated dust jacket. With 6 full-page black and white illustrations by Beresford Egan. A near-fine, sharp copy, very light offsetting to rear pastedown, contents clean, in a well-preserved example of the scarce dust jacket, spine panel toned, ends chipped, couple of nicks to extremities, short closed tear to foot of rear panel, some light marks and soiling, front panel illustration bright.