DAVIDSON (John). A full and true Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, which Lasted one night And one day: With a history Of the pursuit of Earl Lavender And Lord Brumm by Mrs Scamler and Maud Emblem. By John Davidson. With a frontispiece By Aubrey Beardsley. London: 12 York Buildings, Adelphi: Ward & Downey, Limited, 1895. Lge.post 8vo; frontispiece on art paper, with tissue guard; title-page printed in black and red, with introductory verse, in black, on verso; leaf bearing epigraph on recto, blank on verso, author’s Note (two leaves), and Contents leaf precede start of text; integral advertisement leaf at end; pp.xii+290+[ii]; deep sea-green buckram lettered gilt on front cover and spine; a.e. uncut; end-papers coated deep purple. Some very slight fading of cloth on spine and edges of boards; insignificant crease to corner of front end-paper; otherwise a very nice copy.

GB £160.00

US $262.40

An amusing and very readable fantasy satire on fin de siécle attitudes in general, and particularly those of the decadents and æsthetes, including minor episodes of flagellation set in a kind of city existing beneath London. Not entirely fantasy however: the Scottish writer who makes his appearance at the Prosemen’s Club and takes the decision to kill himself because there are only about six books a year that he could write about at length and he is forced to spend all his days reviewing in order to live is not perhaps wholly unconnected with the author himself, who was a member of the Rhymer’s Club and did in fact kill himself some fourteen years later for reasons not utterly dissimilar. Clute & Nicholls, p.303; CBEL, III, p.337; Lasner, Beardsley bibliography, 82: the first binding, later copies being in blue cloth. In this copy the following errata and typographical flaws have been noted (state or issue significance, if any, undetermined): p.16, l.12, faint risen space after ‘look’; p.28, l.11, ‘they oung’ for ‘the young’; p.50, l.11, ‘l’ of ‘elbow’ impressed too heavily; p.54, last line, ‘o’ in ‘occurred’ broken; p.69, last line, ‘g’ in ‘everything’ printed faintly; p.98, l.2, ‘W’ in ‘We’, and l.8, ‘d’ in ‘minds’ broken; p.119, l.7, first ‘p’ in ‘appointed’ battered at tail; p.123, antepenultimate line, raised space before ‘Brumm’s’; p.129, l.12, ‘indentity’ for ‘identity’; p.151, l.3, risen space before ‘but’; p.174, l.21, ‘p’ in ‘pushing’ broken; p.177, l.6, risen space after ‘bless’; p.203, l.1, ‘a’ of ‘what’, and l.4, ‘d’ of ‘remind’ broken; p.241, l.13, redundant hyphen before start of line; p.253, l.2 of drop-head, ‘THOUHGT’ for ‘THOUGHT’; p.262, l.12, ‘o’ in ‘potion’ broken; p.275, l.5, ‘t’ lacking in first ‘the’, and l.14, ‘W’ in ‘Whipping’ broken.
Ref: ERT803943