All At Sea

[Cecil Beaton. Osbert & Sacheverell Sitwell]


The dust jacket for All at Sea is Beaton’s second design for a book cover. It features a grey and pink illustration of a stylized cocktail bar on an art deco liner, with wave border and titles. The image is adapted from an original set design created by Beaton for Osbert and Sacheverell’s short satirical play First-Class Passengers Only. The play had premiered at the Arts Theatre in London earlier that year, starring the brothers' sister Edith. It is reproduced in All at Sea alongside Osbert Sitwell’s ‘A Few Days in an Author’s Life, being the preface to “All At Sea,” and containing tales of modern knight-errantry and derring-do, with a few reflections that arise therefrom.’ Beaton met the Sitwell siblings during the early stages of his career. Their support, which included being photographed by the budding artist, gave Beaton an entrance into their creative milieu.


Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. With a dust jacket design by Cecil Beaton. Duckworth. London. 1927. First edition. Hardback, octavo; blue cloth-bound boards, white title to spine, dust jacket. 200 pages. English. 230 x 155mm. 0.4kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; light shelf wear to jacket, light ruffling to spine ends and forecorners, a short 1.5cm tear to top edge of front panel, a short tear to top of rear fold, small stain to base of spine, toning to white paper particularly to spine; slight offsetting to endpapers, previous owner's inscription to front endpaper.