Sappho

No Place Stated: The Golden Bough Press. Very Good with no dust jacket. 1930. Limited/Numbered Edition. Hardcover. The free endpapers have a slight curl, likely from the marbling process. Spine and joints slightly darker than the rest of the leather. Minor rubbing to the joints, cover paper abraded where it wraps under the tail edge of the rear board, corners bumped with wear through to the boards.; Daudet's novel of the personal failings and stumbling, lurching relationship of a young Southern French student Jean Gaussin and his older Parisian lover Fanny Legrand. Jean is troubled by Fanny's life of luxury from many profitable, personal relationships: an engineer, a poet, an engraver, and a sculptor who had her pose for his statue of Sappho. After their living in the country and his dalliance with a young woman, it all falls apart. In the end, Fanny leaves him with little but a letter and he's right to lament his "...broken, wasted life, all wrecked and tearful... From The Golden Bough Press, this is copy 140 of a limited edition of 750 and signed on the limitation page by the illustrator Majeska. Madame Yna Majeska, born in Philadelphia, PA as Henriette Stern, received artistic training in Europe and found more acceptance and work by representing herself as European with a spurious, exotic name. Her career in book illustration spanned the 1920's & '30s, and she's known for stylized drawings of women, often in erotic circumstances. She illustrated fine press and trade books by Oscar Wilde, Pierre Louys, Isadora Duncan, and others and was active in fashion and costume design, the latter notably for Ziegfeld Follies. Written in ink script on the verso of the limitation page is "Especially hand-coloured/for Earl J. Brady/Bernadette Foley/February 9th 1934". All 18 illustrated halftone plates are present, plus a tissue-guarded frontis. Illustrations are mildly-erotic, monochrome, ink line drawings. As issued, some had Majeska's typical use of pale spot color to enhance the drawing and others were entirely monochrome. Bernadette Foley added similar, pale spot color to the monochrome drawings so that all drawings have color. Some existing elements are colored over for prominence and more intense glossy color was used for details such as women's nipples. In a bespoke, contemporary, three-quarter orange Morocco binding by Bennet of New York with that fact in the tiniest hand to the verso of the front free endpaper. The spine has 4 raised bands and gilt titling including "Illustrated and Signed by Majeska" and "Hand Colored Copy". Cover papers, pastedowns, and endpapers are vividly hand-marbled with hand-gilt variegation. The text is printed on "specially made" mould made rag paper, but curiously the outer 3 leaves are Utopian, watermarked, laid paper. Top of the block is gilt. Typography by S. A. Jacobs. The colophon calls out "Set in Estinne Old Style and printed from type..." Jacobs was an early practitioner of Linotype and this book would have been composed on the Model 17 machine at his Polytype Press in Manhattan, NY. The copyright page states, "Printed in the United States of America." In 1930 Jacobs was concentrating on typography instead of printing, so the printer of this book isn't known. Samuel A. Jacobs was a master typographer, sole typographer of e. e. cummings's work, and the principal of Polytype Press and, later, of Golden Eagle Press. Little is known about The Golden Bough Press and their output, but for a book or two. No place stated, but the press operated in Phoenix, Arizona. They were not fastidious about pagination in this book, with unnumbered plates sometimes counted in the pagination and sometimes not. All are present, though. This is a unique, hand-colored, specially bound copy that is Very Good, overall, with a clean and Fine interior.; Ink Line Drawings, Hand-Colored; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall; [5 blank], 236, [13 blank] pages; Signed by Illustrator .