Beschreibung:

LEWIS, Wyndham. Fifteen Drawings . London: The Ovid Press, 1919. Broadsheets (c. 406 x 282mm). 15 mounted plates after Lewis, 7 printed in colours, 'Nude I' and 'Nude II' with additional hand-colouring, the mount-leaves captioned in English and French. (Occasional, very light spotting or browning to plates, some mount-leaves lightly browned or creased at outer edges.) Loose as issued in original portfolio, upper cover with mounted print of 'Group' after Lewis, lower cover with Ovid Press device after Edward Wadsworth (a little browned, marked and stained, joints a little worn causing small losses). Provenance : Douglas Geoffrey Bridson (1910-1980, bookplate on pastedown of upper cover). FIRST EDITION, NO. 85 OF 250 COPIES [OF WHICH PROBABLY FEWER WERE ISSUED], inscribed on the pastedown of the upper cover '250 Copies , This is No 85 , J[ohn] R[odker]'. Although the stated limitation of Fifteen Drawings was 250 copies, Pound and Grover (citing Ransom) note that 'not more than 50 copies were actually issued'; however, as Morrow and Lafourcade counter, 'although the scarcity of this portfolio would tend to verify [Ransom's] statement, if we may assume that the limitation notices were numbered sequentially--and not randomly--considerably more than 50 copies were published, as a number of copies examined bear high limitation numbers'. In the present copy, which is from the library of the poet and broadcaster D.G. Bridson, the plates are in the following states: 'Post Jazz' is unhyphenated and correctly titled; 'British Museum Reading Room' is mounted horizontally; 'Nude I'-'Nude IV' bear the French captions 'Nû I'-'Nû IV'; 'Pole-jump' is correctly titled in French. Morrow and Lafourcade Lewis A5; Pound and Grover Lewis B2 (basing the description on this and other copies).