ARISTOPHANES; Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator). The Lysistrata. Now First Wholly Translated into English. London. 1896.

ARISTOPHANES; Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator). The Lysistrata. Now First Wholly Translated into English. London. 1896. [New York: Odyssey Publications. 1967].

Folio. Original blue boards, printed label to upper board, top-edge trimmed, the others uncut, in publisher’s purple solander box; pp. vi, [4], 61, [1], with 8 plates by Beardsley; solander box a little stained and sunned; light foxing to endpapers, else a near-fine copy.

Limited photolithographic facsimile of the first edition of Beardsley’s illustrations to Lysistrata, no. 53 of 515 copies, using paper and binding similar to the original.

The copy reproduced was no. 33 of the original 100 published in 1896 by Leonard Smithers. The information concerning the facsimile, including publisher’s name, edition, and a limitation notice are on the title-page verso. Aristophanes’ ‘tale of a sex strike among Athenian women’ was illustrated by Beardsley with ‘gross, buttocky Athenians in rococo frills and monstrous, comic penises’ (ODNB). These are Beardsley’s most explicit illustrations, and at the end of his life he urged Leonard Smithers in a letter to ‘destroy all copies of Lysistrata and bad drawings […] By all that is holy, all obscene drawings’.

Samuels Lasner 107f.

SKU: 2125985