BEARDSLEY, Aubrey (illustrator). A Book of Fifty Drawings … with an Iconography by Aymer Vallance.

With the First Beardsley Iconography

BEARDSLEY, Aubrey (illustrator). A Book of Fifty Drawings … with an Iconography by Aymer Vallance. London: [P. Naumann for] Leonard Smithers. [January] 1897.

[offered with:]

—. A Second Book of Fifty Drawings. London: [P. Naumann for] Leonard Smithers & Co. 1899.

Two volumes, 4to. Publisher’s vellum over boards, upper boards lettered and decorated in gilt to designs by Beardsley, spines lettered directly in gilt, top-edges gilt; A Book of Fifty Drawings: pp. [8], 212; 50 full-page drawings by Beardsley included in pagination, signed and numbered by Leonard Smithers to front free endpaper verso in black ink; A Second Book of Fifty Drawings: pp. 213, [1 (blank)]; frontispiece and 50 plates by Beardsley included in pagination, silhouette of Beardsley to final recto, limitation page numbered in light brown ink; light soiling to spine of A Second Book of Fifty Drawings, slightly heavier discolouration to spine and boards of A Book of Fifty Drawings, with a few small marks; uniform light toning to both vols; nonetheless a beautiful set.

Beardsley’s Book of Fifty Drawings (no. 12 of 50 copies) and A Second Book of Fifty Drawings (no. 3 of 50), both belonging to the scarce limited editions on Japanese vellum and bound in gilt vellum, the first signed and numbered by Leonard Smithers; an attractive and nicely matched set.

Beardsley himself had selected the fifty drawings included in A Book of Fifty Drawings, five of which appear here for the first time; ‘Vallance’s iconography, the first attempt to list the artist’s works, was revised for Robert Ross’s Aubrey Beardsley’ (Samuels Lasner). Twenty-nine of the fifty drawings in A Second Book appear for the first time.

Gertner Zatlin 954, 1062; Samuels Lasner 112 and 132.

SKU: 2124713