LACLOS, Choderlos de; ALASTAIR (illustrator). Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Paris: The Black Sun Press. 1929.
Two vols, folio. Original printed wrappers with fold-over flaps; all edges untrimmed; pp. I: 276; II: 262; slight traces of tape to free endpapers, spine ends slightly creased and chipped; otherwise near fine.
First edition, one of 1020 copies, of Laclos’s libertine novel translated by Ernest Dowson, with fourteen full plate illustrations by the German artist Alastair.
A beautiful production by the Black Sun Press in two volumes, the text in English and illustrations throughout by Alastair. Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a an epistolary novel first published in 1782 and involving two wealthy and depraved aristocrats who exchange boasts about seducing and manipulating their victims.
The Black Sun Press was an English-language publishing house based in Paris. Founded in 1927 by American expatriates Harry and Caresse Crosby, it published the early works of figures such as Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Crane, D.H. Lawrence, and Hemingway. The books, all handset, were typographically impeccable and beautifully bound.
Minkoff A-31
#2121218