The Vale Press Edition

Exhibition
Highlights

Introduction
Some Early Editions
Some Specialized Versions
Courier and the Ink-Blot Scandal
The Vale Press Edition
Some 20th-Century Editions

Daphnis & Chloe

The Vale Press Edition

Longus. Daphnis and Chloe: a most sweet and pleasant pastoral romance for young ladies. Translated by George Thornley. London: Vale Press, 1893.

Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon both worked on the designs and the cutting of the wood-blocks for this famous fin-de-siècle edition of the Longus text. The Ballantyne Press printed 210 copies, and it was sold by Elkin Mathews and John Lane. This was the first of the Vale Press books.

The illustration of the wedding feast includes a series of real-life portraits in the figures on the far right. Among the people portrayed are Ricketts and Shannon, Sturge Moore, and Lucien Pisarro. C.J. Holmes noted in his Self and Partners that the figure opposite the artists at the table is "an unfamiliar Holmes [i.e. himself]. As Ricketts sat at work among us one evening, some remark made him rock with laughter and I heard him say, 'Oh damn, I've run the graver through Holmes's moustache. It must come out.' And out it came."

The copy on the right is in a binding by Sybil Pye.

Exhibited below are two trial proofs of illustrations for the edition, one each by Shannon and Ricketts.

(Pye binding, purchase 1959; the two proofs were the gift of Albert Sperisen, 1963).

Back To The Top