The Queen of the Fishes.

12 woodcut illustrations, 4 in 4 colours, one in 4 colours with gold and 7 in grey, 4 green borders and one gold. 3 ornaments in red, all designed and engraved on wood by Lucien Pissarro. Printed on Japanese paper. One of 150 copies bound thus, a further 30 copies were bound in olive green calfskin. 8vo., original full vellum with gilt iris decoration on upper cover, this being the variant with two iris decorations on the upper cover at top and bottom, top edge gilt, housed in a contemporary, perhaps the original, card slipcase. A little spotting to endpapers and blanks but generally a very good, bright copy with none of the usual bowing. The very first Eragny Press book and very hard to come by, printed in 1894 by Lucien Pissarro at his press in Epping [Essex] and published by Ricketts as a Vale Publication. After failing to interest publishers in an illustrated edition of Nerval's 'La Reine des poissons', Lucien decided to print the book himself using a version of Nerval's text, translated into English by his wife Esther's friend Margaret Rust who made it more suitable for children. Pissarro exploded onto the private press scene with an astonishing display of four colour and gold printing, and the reproduction of hand written text using process blocks. Charles Ricketts published the book and it was sold by John Lane at the Bodley Head. …