The Dancing Faun.

London: John Lane; Roberts Bros., Boston,, 1894. First edition, first issue, designated by the blue cloth and key on spine in gilt; number 2 in John Lane's Keynotes series. Farr's first novel, The Dancing Faun, is strikingly Wildean in its style, so much so that it has been accused of "parody rather than discipleship" (Harris, p. 1412). The work "combines elements of melodrama, social realism, and comedy of manners" (Orlando). Florence Farr (1860-1917) was an actress, director, journalist, women's rights activist, chief adept of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and close friend and collaborator of William Butler Yeats. She attended Queen's College, the first woman's college in England, and alongside this work and a second novel published several academic texts on occult history and literary theory, and a feminist treatise, Modern Woman: Her Intentions, in 1910. The Keynotes Series, comprising 33 novels and short story collections, was published in a distinctive format featuring Aubrey Beardsley's cover designs and embellishments by John Lane between 1893 and 1897. The cover of this work notably features a caricature of the artist James McNeill Whistler in the form of the faun. Beardsley produced the designs for 22 Keynotes volumes while he was working on The Yellow Book, which John Lane was also publishing. The Keynotes series shared a close relationship with the progressive literary trends of 1890s. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, key monogram to spine and rear board, titles and pictorial panel to cover in dark blue, all designed by Aubrey Beardsley, top edge trimmed, others untrimmed. With the publisher's advertisements to the rear. Title page design by Aubrey Beardsley printed in black and red. Contemporary ownership inscription to half-title. Spine cocked and a little faded, with bumping to spine ends, tips and extremities, rear board slightly scuffed, rear hinge partly cracked but firm. Still a very nice copy. Lasner 26; Wendell V. Harris, "John Lane's Keynotes Series and the Fiction of the 1890's", PMLA, Vol. 83, No. 5 (Oct., 1968), p. 1412.