The Book of Beauty [DELUXE SIGNED EDITION]

[Cecil Beaton]


I have tried...to make my book an analysis of modern beauty, a collection of the loveliest ladies I have ever seen, and, in time, it may become a sentimental document for our granchildren, to marvel at all the types of beauty to-day; the latest varieties of Venus as well as the counterparts of former belles.'
 
The Book of Beauty is Cecil Beaton's first book. It is an unashamed paean to the beauty of the women who inhabit his world. The book is inspired by books of beauty published in the Victorian period and by his childhood fascination with the theatricality and glamour of the opposite sex. Photographs of women are accompanied by flowery descriptions. Sitters include Baba and Nancy Beaton, Edith Sitwell, Tallulah Bankhead, Tilly Losch, Nancy Cunard and Lady Diana Cooper. The whole captures the wit, intelligence and spirit of the modern women. A rare copy of the deluxe edition, limited to 110 copies, signed and numbered by Beaton.


Cecil Beaton. Duckworth. London. 1930. First edition. From the deluxe edition limited to 110 copies, bound in fine ivory cloth and printed on handmade paper by the Camelot Press Ltd. Numbered and signed by the author. This copy being number 50. Hardback, quarto; ivory cloth-bound boards, with gilt title to spine, top-edge pink. xii, 67 pages. Colour frontispiece, 27 hors-texte black-and-white collotype plates and numerous line-drawing illustrations in the text. English. 295 x 235mm. 0.8kg. . Very good; light shelf wear and some light soiling and marks to white boards and spine, spine lightly toned; some occasional faint spotting to some of the plates.