JONSON, Ben; [Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator)]. Volpone: or The Foxe. A New Edition with a Critical Essay on the Author by Vincent O'Sullivan and a Frontispiece Five Initial Letters and a Cover Design Illustrative and Decorative by Aubrey Beardsley togeth…

‘One of the Strongest Things I Have Ever Done’ (Beardsley)

JONSON, Ben; [Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator)]. Volpone: or The Foxe. A New Edition with a Critical Essay on the Author by Vincent O'Sullivan and a Frontispiece Five Initial Letters and a Cover Design Illustrative and Decorative by Aubrey Beardsley together with an Eulogy of the Artist by Robert Ross. New York: John Lane. 1898.

4to. Original green cloth, ornate gilt decoration and lettering to upper board, gilt lettering to spine, largely uncut; pp. xlv, [1], 193, [1], eight illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley including reproduction of cover design, frontispiece, and six illuminated initials; endpapers a little browned; very good copy.

First edition, the American sub-issue, no. 193 of 1000 copies, of Beardsley’s final, uncompleted commission.

This issue appears without Beardsley's 'Puck on Pegasus' device in gilt to the rear boardcover, although it does appear on the title- page. Both Samuels Lasner and the book's own subtitle call for five initial letters, but there are six, one for each act and one for the ‘Argument’, as detailed on the list of illustrations (p. xi).

Beardsley was commissioned by Leonard Smithers to illustrate this book, originally conceived as an edition de luxe with twenty four plates, frontispiece, initial letters and small drawings, in November 1897. His health was already failing due to tuberculosis and when he died in March 1898 he had only produced the illustrations seen here. Despite his fading powers, Beardsley was excited about the project, finding that Jonson's depiction of a greedy and depraved world chimed with his own artistic vision. He wrote that ‘I carry Volpone about with me from dawn to dawn and dream of nothing else’ and considered his illustration for the frontispiece, ‘Volpone Adoring His Treasure’, was 'one of the strongest things I have ever done' (cited in Nelson, p. 163).

Such was the importance attached to this book as a monument to Beardsley's talent that a number of his fellow Decadents were involved in the final publication. Robert Ross wrote an affectionate eulogy that formed the basis of his 1909 biography of Beardsley, Vincent O'Sullivan provided an essay on Jonson that tied him to the fin de siècle sensibility, and Ernest Dowson anonymously edited the text.

Provenance: front free endpaper with inkstamp of Baragwanath, a prominent family linked to Cornwall.

Gallatin, pp. 69-70; Samuels Lasner 129. See ; James G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde and Dowson .(2000).

SKU: 2125420