Book Description

FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 8vo, pp. [viii], 310, [2 catalogue] + colour frontis and 7 illustrations. Quarter black cloth with marbled boards, gilt stamped lettering to spine. Blue stain to top edge (faded), others untrimmed. Pushing and wear to spine ends, corners and top edge. Some foxing, else, clean and tidy, with the plates nice and bright. Very good. A pleasing copy of an attractive edition.
Dealer Notes
Maurois’ fictionalised Jazz Age biography of Shelley, translated from the French by short story writer and Yellow Book editor, Ella D’Arcy. One of the ‘romance biographies’ that followed the success of Stratchey’s Eminent Victorians (1918), Maurois (through D’Arcy) renders Shelley as ‘a demigod with flashing eyes, a shirt-collar open on a delicate throat, and hair as fine as spun silk,’ while his second wife, author of Frankenstein is ‘Mary of the nut-brown eyes […] slim and true as a Toledo blade’. Ariel went on to be the first title published by Penguin Books.
Author MAUROIS, André; D’Arcy, Ella (translator); Jacquier (illustrator)
Date 1925
Publisher London: John Lane The Bodley Head
Condition Very good

Price: £40.00

Offered by Quair Books

Friends of the PBFA

For £10 get free entry to our fairs, updates from the PBFA and more.

Join PBFA

Membership of the PBFA is open to anyone who has been trading in antiquarian and second-hand books for a minimum of two years subject to certain criteria.
Find Out More