The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Lynd Ward.
New York: Macy-Masius: The Vanguard Press, 1928. Illustrated with mezzotints by Lynd Ward. 4to (10 x 7 inches). 106 pp. Decorative title page printed in green and black. Twenty-five full-page mezzotints by Ward, with historiated headpieces and side-pieces bordering the text throughout. Illustrated green pictorial endpapers. Original imitation wood-grain paper over boards, brown leather spine lettered in blind.
FIRST EDITION. First impression of 2,000 copies. Set in Blado Italic on Aurelian Rag paper; composition and presswork by The Marchbanks Press. Signed by Lynd Ward on the front free endpaper. No dust jacket.
Boards lightly toned and rubbed at the extremities; rear board with some additional wear. Spine intact and secure. Page block tanning at edges, else the mezzotint plates and text quite clean. Very good.
Horodisch, p. 106.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol was written during Wilde's exile in France following his release from Reading Prison, where he had served two years for gross indecency. Ward's mezzotints — his first work for a fine press book, predating Gods' Man (1929) — match Wilde's poem in their atmospheric darkness, rendering the prison's figures in dense, velvety shadow.
Item #144208Price: $650.00