"The Book Of Beauty" 1930 BEATON, Cecil
$8,500
BEATON, Cecil
[67] pp.
Duckworth
1930
11 1/8" x 9"
Exceedingly rare with the pictorial jacket
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Illustrated with a coloured frontispiece from the author's drawing of Queen Alexandra, 27 collotype reproductions of his photographs, and 100 line drawings in the text.
Cecil Beaton's scarce first book. The Book of Beauty is Beaton's unashamed paean to the beauty of the women who inhabit his world. The book is inspired by books of beauty published in the Victorian period and by his childhood fascination with the theatricality and glamour of the opposite sex. Photographs of women are accompanied by flowery descriptions. Sitters include Baba and Nancy Beaton, Edith Sitwell, Tallulah Bankhead, Tilly Losch, Nancy Cunard and Lady Diana Cooper. The whole captures the wit, intelligence and spirit of the modern women.
I have tried...to make my book an analysis of modern beauty, a collection of the loveliest ladies I have ever seen, and, in time, it may become a sentimental document for our granchildren, to marvel at all the types of beauty to-day; the latest varieties of Venus as well as the counterparts of former belles.
The Book of Beauty is a 1930 book by Cecil Beaton, his first published book of photographs. In his concept of beauty, Beaton, with sketches and photographs, highlights actresses such as Tallulah Bankhead and Anna May Wong but also modernist literary figures like Edith Sitwell and Nancy Cunard.
Contents:
Lillie Langtry
Lily Elsie
Gaby Deslys
Gina Palerme
Mary Curzon, Lady Howe
The Morgan Sisters (Thelma Furness, Viscountess Furness and Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt)
Gladys Cooper
Rosamond Pinchot
Lady Diana Abdy
The Beaton Sisters (Nancy Beaton and Baba Beaton)
The Jungman Sisters (Zita Jungman and Baby Jungman)
Edith Sitwell
Virginia Woolf
Hazel Lavery
Tallulah Bankhead
The French Sisters (Essex French and Valerie French)
Lillian Gish
Marion Davies
Norma Shearer
Alice White
Greta Garbo
Irene Castle
Gertrude Lawrence
Lady Eleanor Smith and Lady Pamela Smith
Hon. Daisy Fellowes
Tilly Losch
Vicomtess Alice de Janzé
Marjorie Oelrichs
Mrs Gordon Beckles Wilson
Mona Williams
The Ruthven Twins (Alison Ruthven and Peggy Ruthven)
Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury
Nada Ruffer and Clarita de Uriburu
Freda Dudley Ward
Anita Loos
Adele Astaire
Lady Nancy Cunard
Lady Sylvia Ashley
Lady Diana Cooper