BEARDSLEY, Aubrey Reproductions of Eleven Designs Omitted from the First Edition of Le Morte Darthur … [Half-title:] Morte Darthur Portfolio.

Previously Omitted Arthurian Illustrations

BEARDSLEY, Aubrey Reproductions of Eleven Designs Omitted from the First Edition of Le Morte Darthur … [Half-title:] Morte Darthur Portfolio. [Edinburgh: Turnbull & Spears for] London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. 1927.

4to. Original calf-backed boards with vellum sides, floral design by Beardsley blocked to upper board in gilt, spine lettered directly in gilt, top-edge gilt, the others uncut; pp. [2 (blank, limitation)], 45, [3], with half-title; half-title within woodcut border, woodcut Dent device to title, initials, headpieces, cartouches, and 14 illustrations by Beardsley; light soiling and a few small scuffs to boards, short splits to joints unobtrusively repaired; slight offsetting to blank versos and to colophon, else internally very good; a handsome copy.

Beardsley’s Morte d’Arthur Portfolio, no. 19 of 300 copies on handmade paper, issued in conjunction with the 1927 third Beardsley-illustrated edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Birth, Life, and Acts of King Arthur.

The Portfolio contains fourteen drawings by Beardsley (intended as chapter headings but omitted from the 1893–94 first edition), an enlarged reproduction of his ‘Merlin’ drawing, an unused front wrapper design (adhered to p. 43), and a reproduction of the front wrapper as issued. The publisher J.M. Dent had planned, at the end of the nineteenth century, to create a lavish and beautiful illustrated version of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, in a similar vein to Morris’s Kelmscott Press books, but using a less expensive printing process. Loath to pay the elevated fee Morris would have charged for this commission, Dent was persuaded to employ twenty-year-old Aubrey Beardsley, who became disillusioned with the project when several images needed to be dramatically reduced for printing. The first edition was published in 1893–94, with a second edition appearing in 1909.

Due to increasing demand, a third edition was issued in 1927, with ten new designs omitted from the first but included in the second, as well as three new drawings never before printed – two for the paper cover of the first edition issued in parts, and an eleventh chapter heading. A facsimile reproduction of the Merlin drawing was also included in a reduced form. This portfolio was created so that possessors of the original large paper edition could own the additional illustrations instead of having to purchase the third edition in its entirety.

The Morte d’Arthur Portfolio contains a foreword by Aymer Vallance, associate of William Morris and contributor of the list of drawings to Beardsley’s Book of Fifty Drawings, the first attempt to list Beardsley’s works; there is also a note on the omitted designs by R.A. Walker.

Gertner Zatlin 370; Samuels Lasner

22d; see Reade 55.

SKU: 2124716