Portrait of New York

Cecil Beaton.

B.T. Batsford Ltd. London. 1948. Revised edition, first thus. First published in 1938 under the title 'Cecil Beaton's New York'. Hardback, quarto; grey cloth-bound boards, red title to spine, top edge red, dust jacket. viii, 136 pages. Over 100 hors-texte b&w photographs and line-drawings within the text. English. 230 x 160mm. 0.5kg. . Very good, in good dust jacket; light shelf wear and rubbing to jacket, some rubbing to edges, a few small nicks along top and lower edges repaired with tape to verso of jacket, split along part of rear spine hinge, browning to jacket, not price-clipped; light off-setting to endpapers, no inscriptions.

'My book is... less a guide-book than a catalogue of impressions, mostly visual, of a city that, with each visit, becomes for me ever more beguiling, mysterious and impressive.'
 
Beaton's Cecil Beaton's New York  was written before the war and provides a witty and glamourous snapshot of Manhattan in the 1930s. Beaton spent much of his time in New York during this period as a photographer for Conde Nast. The book captures the city he experienced - it's style, exuberance, diversity, people and culture. Beaton's photographs and illustrations complement the text. This edition, re-titled Portrait of New York , was published 10 years later in 1948. The publisher describes it as having been 'so extensively re-written and re-illustrated that it is virtually a new book.'