Aubrey Beardsley / Sir Thomas Malory — Le Morte Darthur, 1893–94 — First Edition in the Rare Original 12 Parts

Title

Aubrey Beardsley / Sir Thomas Malory — Le Morte Darthur, 1893–94 — First Edition in the Rare Original 12 Parts

Description

BEARDSLEY, AUBREY VINCENT, illustrator (1872–1898); MALORY, SIR THOMAS. Le Morte Darthur: The Birth, Life and Acts of King Arthur, of His Noble Knights of the Round Table... London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1893–94.

First edition, complete in the original twelve separately issued parts, preserving Beardsley’s great Arthurian masterpiece in the scarce form in which it was first published.

Twelve parts, quarto, in the original blue-gray pictorial wrappers decorated after Beardsley, with full-page and double-page illustrations, ornamental borders, decorated initials, chapter headings, head- and tail-pieces, and hundreds of additional designs throughout. Housed in protective slipcases.

Le Morte Darthur was Aubrey Beardsley’s first major commission and the work that established his reputation at barely twenty years of age. Commissioned by J. M. Dent as an answer to the elaborate productions of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, the project occupied Beardsley for approximately eighteen months and resulted in an extraordinary body of graphic work: two photogravure frontispieces, eighteen full-page wood-engravings—including five double-page compositions—and approximately 350 designs for borders, initials, headings and decorations.

The illustrations represent the emergence of the unmistakable visual language now associated with Beardsley: dense black-and-white contrasts, sinuous line, Japanese influence, grotesque fantasy and a distinctly modern reinterpretation of medieval imagery. The project helped move Arthurian illustration away from the prevailing Pre-Raphaelite tradition and toward the radical graphic style that would define the 1890s.

Rare in the Original Parts

The survival of a complete set in its twelve original wrappers is considerably scarcer than copies encountered in bound form. Upon completion of the serial publication, subscribers were offered publisher-supplied binding cases or encouraged to return their parts to Dent for binding. Consequently, many sets lost their original wrappers altogether, while the fragile surviving wrappered sets are frequently incomplete or heavily worn. Specialist booksellers specifically note that original-parts sets are seldom encountered and that most surviving examples were either subsequently bound or suffered substantial wrapper deterioration.

The ordinary issue consisted of 1,500 copies, alongside a separate superior issue of only 300 copies printed on Van Gelder paper.

Gordon N. Ray famously considered the Malory designs among Beardsley’s finest achievements, and the work is now recognized as one of the landmarks of fin-de-siècle book illustration.

Condition: Some chipping and small losses to the fragile wrapper spines, with scattered soiling and occasional light spotting internally, as expected for a set preserved in its original serial format. Despite these faults, the complete survival of all twelve parts in their original wrappers is the defining virtue of the set.

A highly desirable example of one of the foundational illustrated books of the 1890s, preserved in the substantially rarer original serial state rather than in the later bound configuration.