MAX BEERBOHM FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896. First edition : precedes the London edition by four days. Beerbohm’s first regularly published book – “Dandies and Dandies”, “The Pervasion of Rouge” and five further essays which immediately established his reputation – “These papers are really very brilliant, and almost every page would yield a quotation worth giving” (York Herald, 17th June 1896).
Crown 8vo (19cm). [viii],(166),[ii]pp. Original decorative cloth, enamelled and gilt in an art-nouveau design of butterflies, ribbons and mirrors by Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867-1944); top edge gilt; a little very minor rubbing; tiny bruise to one corner; some spotting, especially to endpapers, prelims and edges, but a very good, bright, and partly unopened copy of one of the most attractive productions of the 1890s.

£200

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London & New York : John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1899. First edition : the American-printed sheets of the scarcer (and probably earlier) of the two London impressions, with the half-title and the plain title-page. Beerbohm with twenty essays on royalty, actors, the seaside in winter, sign-boards, music-halls, Covent Garden, and much else besides.
Foolscap 4to (18cm). [viii],(202),[ii]pp. Original green cloth, with white paper spine label, ruled and lettered in black; spine label slightly tanned; spine a little darkened; small and regular mark to upper cover; a few slight marks and spots, but still a very good copy. From the collection of the architectural historian, Professor Derek Linstrum (1925-2009), and with one of his distinctive Italian hand-made paper protective dust-jackets. Gallatin & Oliver 4a.

£100

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London : William Heinemann, 1911. First edition : the variant binding in smooth brown cloth, the spine lettered in upper and lower case. Just 2,150 copies were issued in this form, the remainder being put in a more robust library binding. “A diaphanous novel possessed of a delayed explosive charge that detonates today with surprising power ... the finest, and darkest, kind of satire: as intoxicating as champagne, as addictive as morphine, and as lethal as prussic acid” (Robert McCrum) – “Mr Beerbohm in his way is perfect” (Virginia Woolf).
Post 8vo (21cm). [viii],350,[ii]pp. Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt, and with the publisher’s device in blind on lower cover; a few faint marks and minor signs of age and use; mild tanning of endpapers, but overall a very good, sound, and rather better than usual copy. Book-label of a modern Connecticut collector.

£400

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London : William Heinemann, 1913. First edition. Edwardian society dissected and made playful in an inspired sequence of Max caricatures – Asquith, Balfour, Sir Edward Carson, Caruso, Roger Fry, Lloyd George, George Grossmith, Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, George Moore, Auguste Rodin, Lord Rosebery, George Bernard Shaw, etc.
Crown 4to (24cm). (viii),[4],2,[ii]pp – forty-eight tipped in plates and two full-page illustrations. Original green pictorial cloth gilt in a Beerbohm design; just a hint of rubbing and a touch of bruising, but a very good copy. Small decorative bookplate of Richard Thompson.

£100

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