London: Elkin Mathews, 1896.
Price: $9,500.00
Hardcover. First edition, first issue with the Aubrey Beardsley frontispiece "Black Coffee." Dark blue cloth with spider web design on front cover and gilt lettering on the front board and spine. Modest foxing mostly on the endpapers, gilt rubbed (particularly on the spine) but readable, corners bumped and foxing at the pastedowns, else very good or better. A novel of dysfunctional family and psychological terror. This is the issue of this title with Beardsley's "Black Coffee" frontispiece. The book was recalled after publisher John Lane, the former partner of Elkin Matthews, objected to the use of this drawing, which was originally intended for *The Yellow Book*. Beardsley then provided a new frontispiece entitled "Portrait of the Author." Valance and Gallatin states that only six copies of the first issue were bound and distributed as review copies but were then recalled; the publisher suggested a number closer to 12 copies. In either case, rare. *MSL 94.*.
Item #462881
