BEARDSLEY, Aubrey; John GLASSCO. Under the Hill or the story of Venus and Tannhauser …

A New Ending

BEARDSLEY, Aubrey; John GLASSCO. Under the Hill or the story of Venus and Tannhauser … Paris: Olympia Press. 1959.

8vo. Publisher’s green moiré cloth, upper board lettered and decorated in gilt, spine lettered directly in gilt, gold endpapers; pp. 123, [1 (blank)]; title, frontispiece, and numerous in-text illustrations and tailpieces by Beardsley; spine lightly sunned with slight fading to gilt text at head; without the plastic slipcase as often; a near-fine copy.

First edition thus, no. 2,684 of 3,000 copies, of Beardsley’s unfinished erotic novel, completed by the Canadian poet and translator John Glassco (1909–1981), featuring Beardsley’s intended title-page design for The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser and several illustrations from The Savoy.

Beardsley’s text is based on that of the 1927 edition, and finished in the middle of the tenth chapter, ‘Of the Stabat Mater, Spiridion’, and De la Pine. Glassco adds nine more chapters, including a scene at the opera, Venus reciting a litany of past lovers’ names, an evening of gambling in Gotha, a meeting with the Pope, and an alternate ending in which Tannhäuser is hanged for sport and revived by Venus’s kiss:. The story ends ‘”The fact is, my pet, there’s no dying allowed here, any more than there is being born. We just go on as we are, and I think it’s much nicer. Come on! It’s almost time for lunch.” Tannhäuser began to laugh’ (p. 123).

A Grove Press edition appeared in the same year (reprinted 1967), and the present edition was reprinted in 1966 by the New English Library.

Samuels Lasner 151h.

SKU: 2125992