CHASTELARD

London: Edward Moxon & Co, 1865. FIRST EDITION, First Issue. 174 x 105 mm. (6 3/4 x 4"). 4 p.l., 219 pp.
SPLENDID DEEP PURPLE CRUSHED MOROCCO, LAVISHLY INLAID AND GILT, BY ALFRED DE SAUTY (stamp-signed on front turn-in), covers with rows of green morocco medallions inlaid with a red tulip on a stippled gilt background, the space between the circles with gilt-tooled tan morocco and inlaid morocco dots, raised bands, spine compartment tooled with pointillé gilt, turn-ins with gilt French fillet, gray endpapers, top edge gilt. Ashley Library VI, 55-56. ◆Isolated faint foxing, a couple leaves with expertly repaired short marginal tears, other trivial imperfections internally, but an excellent copy, the text clean and fresh, and IN A SPARKLING BINDING with no signs of use.

This is the first printing of Swinburne's tragedy set in the court of Mary, Queen of Scots, offered in an unusual, remarkably flamboyant, and very skillful binding by De Sauty. One of the most accomplished binders at work in the first third of the 20th century, Alfred de Sauty (1870-1949) was the son of an engineer who had studied that discipline himself before taking up bookbinding, and he brings an engineer's precision to his handiwork. He not only possessed enormous technical skill (he made his own tools), but also had a refined imagination for design. He began his career as a finisher for the renowned Riviere bindery, and after leaving their employ in the late 1890s, he worked as a designer at the Hampstead bindery; in her essay "The Mysterious Mr. De Sauty," binding authority Marianne Tidcombe observes, "De Sauty was responsible for some of the best designs of the two binderies, and carried out all the stages of the craft himself, from sewing to the designing and exceptionally delicate tooling of the covers." In his "Styles and Designs of Bookbindings from the 12th to the 20th Century," Nixon features a binding similar to this one in the techniques employed--particularly the intricate gold tooling--as an exemplar of De Sauty's work, citing it as "a most accomplished piece of finishing." He further notes that De Sauty's "finishing was of a very high standard and he was a patient and careful worker." Prideaux praised De Sauty in her "Modern Bookbindings," saying that "his inlays are distinguished for the taste shown in the association of colours, and his finishing has some of the brilliant qualities of the French school, seen particularly in the finely studded tooling of which he seems particularly fond." In 1922, De Sauty left England for America: he had been recruited to become the manager of the Extra Bindery at RR Donnelly Co. in Chicago, where he did much to raise the standards of hand bookbinding in the United States. Swinburne (1837-1909) was a virtuoso of verse, able to produce dazzling and enthralling lines in a wide range of meters and stanzaic forms. He was also a shocking pagan in terms of the content of his poetry, a significant portion of which was erotic. Though he was dismissed from Oxford for disciplinary reasons, he formed important friendships there with Ruskin, Tennyson, Morris, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones. The present item is an early tragedy based on historical events, in which the title character falls desperately in love with Mary Queen of Scots, who seems to encourage his affections; however, after he is discovered in her room, she allows him to be executed for his transgression. DNB tells us that "many reviews complained about the immoral nature of the passion of Chastelard for Mary . . . and his wilful pursuit of romantic self-destruction." Modern scholars have noted the strong sado-masochistic themes in the work, evident in Chastelard's willingness—eagerness, even—to die for love, and his verdict on the fickle queen: "men must love you in life's spite; / For you will always kill them; man by man / Your lips will bite them dead; yea, though you would, / You shall not spare one; all will die of you." As a young man, Swinburne was so severely disappointed in love that he chose never to marry, and his hurt and bitterness over this loss comes through in many of his lyrics..