SPLENDIDLY BOUND SET OF CASANOVA’S MEMOIRS, WITH 12 FRONTISPIECES BY ROCKWELL KENT, TOGETHER WITH SCARCE LARGE PORTFOLIO OF SEPARATE IMPRESSIONS, EACH SIGNED BY KENT

CASANOVA DE SEINGALT, Jacques. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova di Seingalt. WITH: Twelve Drawings for the Aventuros Casanova. (London): Aventuros, 1925. Twelve volumes; portfolio. Tall octavo, contemporary full blue crushed morocco gilt, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, illustrated endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut. Portfolio (11 by 14 inches) containing 12 loose matted prints, original half maroon cloth, mounted cover illustration, housed in a custom clamshell box. $7000.

Limited 12-volume private-press edition, an unnumbered copy of only 1026 sets, with 12 frontispiece line cuts of pen-and-ink drawings by Rockwell Kent, very handsomely bound. Accompanied by the scarce portfolio of Kent’s 12 prints (measuring 11 by 14 inches), all but one signed by him, one of only 26 sets.

"This supreme book of adventures is a real man's record of his real life… It is one of the great autobiographical revelations which the ages have left us, with Augustine's, Cellini's, Rousseau's— of its own kind supreme" (Havelock Ellis). With 12 frontispiece line cuts by Rockwell Kent and an Introduction by Arthur Symons. Kent's art reflects a somewhat "English" style (Hogarth, Blake, Constable, the Pre-Raphaelites), and the British wood-engravers were his artistic antecedents. In 1936, the magazine Prints conducted an extensive public survey on the work of graphic artists in the United States, from which Kent emerged as the most widely known and successful printmaker in the country. This copy is accompanied by the scarce portfolio of Kent's 12 prints, individually matted and signed by him (the print for Volume IV is unsigned). Original prospectus laid in portfolio. Zigrosser, 61.

Beautiful bindings fine with minor expert restoration, portfolio covers moderately edge-worn, without ties, signed prints fine. A fine set.