Morte Darthur.: The Text as Written by Sir Thomas Malory and Imprinted by William Caxton at Westminster The Year MCCCCLXXXV and now Spelled in Modern Style. With an Introduction by Professor Rhys and Embellished with Many Original Designs by Aubrey Beardsley.

London: J. M. Dent and Co.,, 1893. A monument of decorative book illustration First Beardsley edition, one of 1,500 copies on ordinary paper, bound from the original twelve monthly instalments published from June 1893 to mid-1894, and with the original wrappers bound in. There were also 300 copies printed on Dutch handmade paper. This was Beardsley's first major commission and the book that launched the "Beardsley look" (Gillon, p. IV). "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, pp. 75-91). "In Le Morte D'Arthur Beardsley learnt his job, but the result is no bungling student's work... If he had never illustrated another book, this edition of Morte D'Arthur could stand as a monument of decorative book illustration" (Lewis, pp. 148-9). Two volumes, large quarto (239 x 190 mm). Contemporary brown half morocco, spines with gilt-tooled raised bands, gilt lettering in compartments, brown cloth sides ruled in gilt, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed, red silk bookmarkers. Engraved frontispiece to each volume, 18 wood-engraved plates (including five double-page), some retaining tissue guards, numerous text illustrations, and approximately 350 repeated designs for chapter headings and borders, all by Aubrey Beardsley. Bookplate on front pastedowns of Robert Peel Sheldon, dated September 1893 and designed by himself (R.P.S. Fecit); Sheldon was an English collector, and perhaps the director of Cabrera Mines, Ltd. Spines faded, minor rubbing to extremities, bookmarkers detached and loosely inserted in each volume, occasional spot of foxing or small faint mark to contents, otherwise internally clean. A very good set. Edmund Vincent Gillon, Illustrations for Le Morte D'Arthur, 1972; John Lewis, The Twentieth Century Book, 1984; Barbara Tepa Lupack, Illustrating Camelot, 2008.