STACPOOLE, H[enry] De Vere. Pierrot! A Story.

By the Author of The Blue Lagoon

STACPOOLE, H[enry] De Vere. Pierrot! A Story. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head and Philadelphia: Henry Altemus. 1896.

8vo. Original buff cloth, printed in red to a design by Aubrey Beardsley, green patterned endpapers designed by Beardsley; pp. viii, 163, [1 (blank)], 16 (advertisements); title-page designed by Beardsley; spine a little sunned; slight staining to head of p. 8, offsetting (from now-removed bookmark?) to pp. 74–75; else a very good copy; blind-embossed stamp of W.H. Smith Library to front free endpaper and title-page.

First edition of the first volume of four-part Pierrot series by Stacpoole, best known for his much-filmed 1908 work The Blue Lagoon.

The Pierrot books follow the story of a young French boy and his psychic double, a German officer, during the Franco-Prussian war. The author was a friend of Beardsley and other Yellow Book writers, and his use of symbolism and the occult sat well with their aesthetic approach. Beardsley, writing to John Lane in July 1895, was expecting to be paid £15 for the commission ‘as the Pierrot commission will mean a good deal of work’ (Letters, p. 94).

Gertner Zatlin 958–62; Samuels Lasner 99; see Vallance 141 for the Pierrot Library.

SKU: 2124694