ARISTOPHANES; Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator); George Frederic LEES (preface). The Lysistrata.

Beardsley as the ‘Fra Angelico of Satanism’

ARISTOPHANES; Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator); George Frederic LEES (preface). The Lysistrata. Paris: ‘Privately printed’. 1931.

Folio. Loose as issued in publisher’s cream wrappers, lettered in red to front wrapper; pp. xv, [3], 61, [1], with half-title; 8 illustrations by Beardsley printed in green and housed in original glassine sleeves; title-page printed in red and black; light creasing and toning to wrappers, short splits to joints, a few minor abrasions to inside of wrappers; internally near fine.

Limited edition, no. 490 of 500 copies on mould-made Annonay paper from a total edition of 525 copies, privately printed in Paris.

The preface on Beardsley and his visual rendition of Lysistrata is by Frederic William Lees (b. 1872), a painter and writer, author and French-to-English translator of several art and literary history books. ‘That Aubrey Beardsley, who was an omnivorous reader of classical literature, was fully able to understand [Aristophanes’ aims], and when illustrating Aristophanes, assume still one more new rôle is undeniable. And it is indeed one of the miracles of art that the Fra Angelico of Satanism could so completely transform himself into a “merry Greek” of the Athenian age’ (p. xv).

There were also twenty-five copies printed on handmade Van Gelder paper with plates on imperial Japanese vellum.

Samuels Lasner 107e.

SKU: 2124726