Poe (Edgar Allan); Clarke (Harry, illustrator) Tales of Mystery and Imagination
£395
London, George G. Harrap, 1919.
First Clarke edition. 4to. Plates and illustrations. Original sage cloth, decorated in black.
Harry Clarke’s superb black & white images provide the perfect counterpoint to Poe’s dark tales. A decent copy, if anything enhanced by the Shrewsbury School’s gilt coat-of-arms to upper cover.
Out of stock
School prize plate to front pastedown, with the same school’s gilt-stamped coat-of-arms to upper cover; covers slightly rubbed at edges, spine a little dulled, but in the main VG.
24 plates and numerous illustrations by Harry Clark.
Related products
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, George G. Harrap, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original purple boards. Dust-jacket.
Illustrated Books
London, The Decoy Press, 1919.
Vol.II only (of 2 published, from a projected series of 12). 8vo. Title printed in red & black. Original quarter linen with paper boards, gilt spine titling.
Change was a brief socialist, illustrated periodical released in the year following the Great War, embodying post-war aspiration. Though twelve issues were intended, only two volumes saw publication. These editions showcased woodcuts and illustrations from artists like Lovat Fraser, Robert Gibbings and Eric Gill among others, both standalone and accompanying the mix of prose, verse, and a detective story, 'The Private Papers of the Oubliette Club.'
Illustrated Books
...translated by Charles Hope Lumley
Paris, The Fortune Press, 1929.
First UK edition, trade issue. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Louÿs's satirical erotic fantasy (1901), in which the easy-going King Pausole of Tryphème rules by two laws, "harm no one" and "do as you please". Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925) also wrote Aphrodite and Songs of Bilitis. Translated by Charles Hope Lumley, with illustrations by Beresford Egan (1905–1984), a Beardsley-influenced exponent of Art Deco; adapted as an operetta by Arthur Honegger in 1930.
Modern Literature
A Novel
London, Sampson Low, [1934].
First edition, "File Copy". 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
The last novel by this insanely prolific Cornish writer, author of the best-selling 'improving story' Her Benny (1879). Wonderful jacket artwork.
Illustrated Books
Paris, The Olympia Press, 1956.
First edition with the images in the first state. 8vo. Original soft wraps with stiff self-wrappers designed by T. Tajiri and printed in black, grey & yellow.
Black & white photographs printed in gravure and laminated, as opposed to the matte second state. Rare.
A short, largely autobiographical novel recounting Miller's impoverished, sexually adventurous bohemian life in Clichy, Paris, in the early 1930s. The text originated around 1940 as one of two commissioned pieces written for a private American collector of erotica, the manuscripts subsequently going missing for over a decade before resurfacing, and Miller rewrote both at Big Sur in 1956 for this edition. The book is illustrated with photogravure plates by Brassaï (pseud. Gyula Halász), whom Miller had already celebrated in The Wisdom of the Heart (1941) and on whom he partly based a character in Tropic of Cancer; the wrapper design is by the sculptor T. Shinkichi Tajiri.