Morte Darthur.: The Birth, Life and Acts of King Arthur of his noble knights of the round table, their marvellous enquests and adventures, the achieving of the San Greal and in the end Le Morte Darthur, with the dolorous death and departing out of this world of them all.

London: Dent,, 1893. Vellucent binding by Cedric Chivers First Beardsley edition, one of 1,500 copies on ordinary paper; another 300 were printed on Dutch handmade paper. This copy in a bright and spectacular example of a "vellucent" binding, by Cedric Chivers of Bath, unsigned but a characteristic example of this style. Chivers invented a way to treat vellum so that it became translucent ("vellucent"): the cover design would be painted on a separate sheet and then a thin sheet of this translucent vellum would be laid over it; gilt tooling would then be applied over the top of this. In his catalogue of Books in Beautiful Bindings (c. 1905), Chivers describes the Beardsley Morte D'Arthur as "bound in whole vellucent from a design by the illustrator of the book. A figure panel enclosed in a floral border". The hand-painted cover illustrations for this set reproduce two of Beardsley's designs, volume one depicting "How Four Queens Found Launcelot Sleeping" (p. 184) and volume two "The Achieving of the Sangreal" (frontispiece). "Commissioned by British publisher J. M. Dent in 1892 and first published in twelve monthly magazine instalments between June 1893, and mid-1894, Aubrey Beardsley's Morte Darthur was one of the most original and certainly one of the most controversial of the nineteenth-century artistic reinterpretations of Malory. Although his illustrations for the Morte established Beardsley as the voice of the 1890s, he was until that time largely an unknown young artist... La Morte Darthur proved to be an immediate sensation upon publication and the impact of Beardsley's Arthurian illustrations was tremendous... Today, Beardsley's illustrations for the Morte, which constituted almost half his lifetime's artistic output, survive as the first example of modern Arthurian book illustration, and they remain arguably the best experimental visual reinterpretation of the Arthurian world. With their bold lines, strong visual themes, and numerous memorable but unconventional details, the Morte 'pictures' (which is how Beardsley himself referred to them) created an important - although admittedly idiosyncratic - symbology and iconography. Often shockingly overt in their sexuality and eroticism, the illustrations rejected the aesthetic of the Pre-Raphaelites who were Beardsley's original mentors and offered a revisionist and parodic treatment of their medievalism. Ultimately, Beardsley went far beyond his original intention to 'flabbergast the bourgeois' of his day; he also challenged generations of readers and artists to view Arthurian society through his own modernist lens" (Lupack, chapter 4). This is a masterpiece of book illustration in a striking binding. Two volumes, large square octavo (250 x 214 mm). Contemporary full vellum over bevelled boards by Cedric Chivers of Bath for Bumpus of London, gilt panelled spines with hand-painted art nouveau-style lettering and scrolling floriate motifs, below which, on a field of gilt dots, an overall pattern of stylised roses and rose leaves (volume I) and tulips and tulip leaves (volume II), sides with two-line gilt border enclosing a frame of hand-painted intertwining roses and rose leaves (volume I) and intertwining tulips and tulip leaves (volume II), both on a field of gilt dots, panel on each front cover with a hand-painted scene taken from Beardsley's designs, back covers with three-line gilt panels, top edges gilt, others untrimmed, partially uncut, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers. Gravure frontispieces, 18 full page wood engravings (including five double-page), numerous text illustrations, and approximately 350 repeated designs for chapter headings and borders, all by Aubrey Beardsley. Front joint of Vol. 2 superficially cracked but firm, short cracks to both spine heads, dampstains to joints and lower extremities, a touch of rubbing to the front of Vol. 1, vellum a little soiled but still bright and handsome, a touch of occasional foxing to contents and some light offsetting from frontispieces, else internally clean. A very good set, bright and fresh. Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790-1914, 314. Barbara Tepa Lupack, Illustrating Camelot, D. S. Brewer, 2008.