THE ISLE OF SAN

Sydney: Art in Australia Limited, 1919. A phantasy. With five original etchings by Norman Lindsay. Pp. [x]+140(last blank), hand-tipped frontispiece portrait and 5 hand-tipped plates within pagination, all with lettered tissue guards, plus numerous small decorative initials printed in red & black; impl. 4to; bound in full black morocco, spine lettered in gilt with four raised bands, the boards decorated with 4 gilt ruled bands which incorporate tiny fleurons and pointilles and extend across both boards and spine, a few faint surface bruises or scratches, edges lightly rubbed (mainly at corners); dentelles decorated with tiny gilt fleurons and single gilt rule; a.e.g.; name stamp on upper pastedown, the free endpapers browned at edges (offsetting from dentelles) and slightly creased, upper free endpaper also very faintly soiled, inner edge of last plate slightly creased (as is the accompanying tissue guard), a little light foxing (including the first plate); Art in Australia Limited, Sydney, 1919. First edition, being number 6 of 120 copies (100 for sale), signed by the author. Chaplin, A Lindsay Miscellany, p. 29: 'The etchings are representative of the artist's best period with his needle, and for this reason, many copies have been broken up, and the etchings sold separately'. *Usually bound in qr. parchment over green cloth, the binding of this copy is unsigned, but the light wear suggests it was probably contemporary with publication. The frontispiece portrait of the author is reproduced from a dry-point by Lindsay. All other plates are original etchings, numbered and signed in pencil by the artist. With the bookplate of Harold L. Sheard (designed by Rose Lowsay?) on the upper pastedown. Harold Llewellyn Sheard (1890-1975) is best known for assembling the archive of his friend, anthropologist Charles P. Mountford, and donating the material (now the Mountford-Sheard Collection) to the State Library of South Australia. Mountford and Sheard were foundation members of the Anthropological Society of South Australia, and one of Sheard's sons accompanied Mountford on the expedition to the Western Desert in 1940.