JOHN SMITH. Aubrey Beardsley. — Platonic Affections. A novel.

Roberts Bros., Boston and John Lane, London, 'The Keynote Series',, 1st Edition, The American issue of the first edition, printed by John Wilson & Sons at the University Press, Cambridge MA, with the Roberts Bros. imprint foremost on the title page and advertisement leaves, and gold-stamped to the base of the backstrip. 8vo. 249pp + [iv] publisher's advertisements. Reddy-brown cloth lettered in gold at the spine, with a black-stamped design by Aubrey Beardsley to the upper board (repeated on the title page) and a small motif to the rear board. Unprinted tissue title page protector. The top edge very lightly spotted, with a tiny trace of toning to the endpapers and a neatly inked former owner name. Very good indeed. No dust wrapper called-for. An uncommon novel of North Devon smuggling, deemed "a remarkably powerful and original story" by 'The Daily Telegraph'. The twenty-first number of The Keynote Series, for which Aubrey Beardsley designed handsome cloth and title page decorations unique to each volume (in total Beardsley produced designs for 22 of the 36 volumes, before being fired by the publisher following the Oscar Wilde trail; the artwork for the remaining volumes was created by Patten Wilson)., Very Good