The Pageant. Volumes I and II.

First editions, volume II retaining the scarce original dust jacket. This pictorial jacket, designed by Gleeson White, is considered to be the "oldest known English 'book-jacket' with a three-colour illustration" (Quaerendo, p. 195). In addition to its elaborate multi-colour design, the jacket is exceptional for the period as it does not reproduce the illustrations on the book covers (as was typical for pictorial jackets in the 19th century), instead featuring an entirely original artwork. This is also one of the few early jackets which can be attributed to a specific designer: Gleeson White is mentioned as the artist in a footnote to the foreword. Although in the 1890s illustrated jackets began to be perceived as "separate objects displaying the work of a famous artist", they were "apparently not saved as such any more than unembellished jackets" (Tanselle, p. 90); this is therefore a remarkable survival. The Pageant was conceptualized by Charles Shannon and Charles Rickett under the guidance of Gleeson White as a Christmas annual magazine, aimed at promoting avant-garde literature and art to a wider audience. The two volumes feature contributions by authors including Michael Field, J. Sturge Moore, W. B. Yeats, Paul Verlaine, Max Beerbohm, Robert Bridges, and Austin Dobson. All the artists who contributed to the internal and external decoration of the volumes are credited in the prelims: the gilt ornaments on the cloth binding were designed by Charles Ricketts, the endpapers by Lucien Pisarro; the plates by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ricketts, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Reginald Savage, George Frederick Watts, and others. Provenance: with the illustrated bookplate of Walter George Good (b. 1909), of New Malden, Surrey, on the front pastedown of volume I. Good was an engraver and an Aubrey Beardsley collector; he also co-edited Beardsley's letters in 1970. Loosely inserted in volume II is a typescript letter from publishers J. M. Dent & Sons to Good, signed and dated 2 March 1955, discussing Good's query about Beardsley's design for the jacket of Dent's edition of Malory's Morte Darthur, and commenting on the jacket of the second volume of The Pageant. Quaerendo, vol. 28, 1998; G. Thomas Tanselle, Book-Jackets. Their History, Forms, and Use, 2011, 97.55. 2 vols, large quartos. Illustrated title page to vol. I by Selwyn Image, both vols illustrated throughout with monochrome and colour plates and vignettes. Original brown cloth, spines and front covers lettered and decorated in gilt, illustrated endpapers, top edges trimmed, others untrimmed. Vol. I without dust jacket, as issued; vol. II with the original dust jacket, and in a later red paper wrapper with printed spine label. Clippings from a catalogue of the prominent antiquarian bookseller and collector Robin de Beaumont, with descriptions of these editions, loosely inserted. Cloth of vol. I a little soiled with a touch of wear at corners, vol. II bright and sharp, top edges dust toned, occasional faint foxing in both vols; spine panel of jacket browned with some loss of paper at ends, couple of minor chips and short closed tears: a very good set, vol. II in a remarkably well preserved example of the fragile jacket.…