Three Nineties Studies: W.B. Yeats, John Gray, Aubrey Beardsley. [With an illustration by Aubrey Beardsley and an introduction by Alan Anderson] - the printer's proofs

Theodore WRATISLAW

Published by Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1980

About this Item

Edition limited to 95 numbered copies, these the printer's proofs: six leaves of galley proofs, printed rectos only, three of them marked up by the editor/printer; 17 leaves of page proofs, printed rectos only, 16 of them marked up by the printer (some inscribed "final proof"), plus illustration, lacking only pp. [1] (half-title), [4] (limitation page), 16; two complete sets of proofs, unbound but as published, on Ingres d'Arches, with a few spare pages on variant (Amalfi) paper; and several lettering-labels, untrimmed. An unusually full set of proofs for Alan Anderson, amply illustrative of the Tragara Press's production process. Articles reprinted from The Artist and Journal of Home Culture (edited by Charles Kains-Jackson), October 1893, November 1893 and April 1894. The writer is sharp about both his first two subjects, politer about his third. "Since the publication of the Countess Kathleen [1892]," he remarks, "Mr Yeats, to judge from contributions to periodical literature and from the three ponderous volumes in which he in collaboration with Mr Edwin Ellis has enshrined his devotion for that amiable and hugely over[r]ated lunatic, William Blake [The Works of William Blake, Bernard Quaritch, 1893], has plunged deeper into the bog of mysticism; but we may hope, for the sake of the Muse who loves Mr Yeats, that this is only temporary. Mysticism like measles usually attacks us when young. Seventeen is the usual age when we dive into the duck-pond of Swedenborg or Boehme; but our poet has delayed and the attack is more difficult to get over. Blake, when in his saner moods[,] could write and paint well. But the maundering prophecies, the imbecile drawings, of his periods of insanity might be well left to be curiosities in such temples of art as the Hanwell or Earlswood Asylums. Mr Yeats' or Mr Ellis' elucidations of Blake are, if anything, wilder than their master." And so on. Beardsley, whose work "still appears to me to be uneven and immature to a certain degree", does fare better. "The most beautiful drawing in [Oscar Wilde's Salome], in my eyes, seems at times so beautiful as to be even painful. In all painting and drawing I do not recollect a figure so curiously delightful as that of Salome in 'The Stomach Dance'. It is deliciously sensual and immoral in its simplicity.".

Seller Inventory # E100194

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Three Nineties Studies: W.B. Yeats, John Gray, Aubrey Beardsley. [With an illustration by Aubrey Beardsley and an introduction by Alan Anderson] - the printer's proofs
• Publisher: Edinburgh: Tragara Press
• Publication Date: 1980
• Binding: No Binding
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Proofs