BRONTË'S WUTHERING HEIGHTS, ILLUSTRATED WITH 15 FOLIO LITHOGRAPHS AND SIGNED BY BALTHUS

(BALTHUS) BRONTË, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1993. Folio (13 by 17 inches), original full gray-green morocco, uncut. Housed in original cloth clamshell box. $5500.

Stunning illustrated edition of Emily Brontë's classic Gothic romance, number 21 of 300 copies signed by Balthus on the colophon, with 15 lithographic plates after Balthus' famous series of drawings.

As a youth, the Paris-born Polish painter Balthus visited the Yorkshire moors, the setting of Brontë's torrid novel; in 1933 he executed a series of drawings in which he identified himself with Heathcliff. It was 60 years before the painter agreed to present the drawings for the first time in their destined context. Fifteen lithographs after the drawings are here printed on fine Japanese paper and mounted on Arches paper. The paper bears the armorial watermark of the Balthus family. The text is set in 13-point Dante type, a typeface originally cut in 1954 by the Officina Bodoni in Verona, Italy.

Book with slight toning to spine. An about-fine copy of a magnificent production.