SCARCE PORTFOLIO EDITION OF DULAC’S CHILDREN’S ALPHABET BOOK

DULAC, Edmund. Lyrics Pathetic & Humorous from A to Z. London: Frederick Warne, 1908 [i.e. 1909]. Tall, slim quarto, original publisher’s clamshell box, mounted cover illustration, 27 loose mounted images. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $5800.

Preferred portfolio edition of this witty children’s alphabet book, with title page and 26 large mounted color illustrations by Edmund Dulac (including mounted end papers from the book-form edition).

“The delightful collection Lyrics Pathetic and Humorous from A to Z [was] a children’s alphabet in the form of elaborate limericks created by Dulac two years earlier, with 24 color plates. These illustrations demonstrated to the public for the first time Dulac’s genius for caricature, a genre he would explore fully over the next 40 years” (Dalby, 82). This special portfolio edition was issued in 1909 from the estimated 1,000 remainder sheets of the 1908 trade edition in book form. Hughey 18a.

Plates fine and lovely in a lightly worn original clamshell portfolio. A very desirable copy.