Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

With forty plates in photogravure.

Item Description

4to. 11 x 8.5 inches. xi + [i] + 236 pp. Bound in cream cloth, gilt, decorated by panels in red and sepia, boards and spine, enclosing facsimile signature on front board, in similarly patterned dust wrapper in green and sepia, which has missing section in rear wrapper decoration. Lower edge deckled. A little wear to extremities with lower rear corner bumped; otherwise a very good clean copy. Illustrated by 40 photogravure plates, including frontispiece. Decorated by title page vignette and by initials. Biography of the sculptor and artist, Sir Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934), known for his sculpture of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain (erroneously called 'Eros') in Piccadilly Circus. Following a period of disgrace, bankrupt and separated from his wife from after 1901, Gilbert lived in Bruges, and produced little work, but did illustrate some Sherlock Holmes stories for The Strand Magazine. He remarried and moved to Rome before his return to England in 1926, where he was rehabilitated as a sculptor, with the aid of journalist, Isabel McAllister, author of this work.