Fleurs du Mal in Pattern and Prose,: by Beresford Egan and C. Bower Alcock

London: Sophistocles Press and T. Werner Laurie Ltd., 1920. Limited numbered and signed edition (of 500) for subscribers only. Signed by Beresford Egan to the limitation. Deep green patterned felt covered boards. A little bumping to the corners only. Clean and tidy boards. A touch of nicking to the head of the spine. Internally a fine copy, with no significant defects. Colour imaginary portrait of Baudelaire. Black and green vignette to the title page and similar to 135. The 15 beautiful full page illustrations, vignettes and historiated initials are in black and white. A lovely copy. Text in English. Fabulous layout / space and evocative Art Deco stylised illustrations. 142 [2] pages. Les Fleurs du Mal includes nearly all of Baudelaire's poetry, written in 1840 and ending with his death in August 1867. "Born in England, Egan was educated in South Africa. After working as a bank clerk, he became sports cartoonist on the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. By the time he returned to England in 1926, his satirical bent was well established. In London, he first became known as a draughtsman and also made his name as a writer. He used many media including oil, watercolour, chalk, scraperboard, gouache and pencil, but mostly he used brush or pen. As his skill increased, he used solid blacks instead of cross-hatching - he wrote in Epitaph (1943) that he used "Black and white with no linear half-tones to confuse the issue, no photographic realism to frustrate the design." Egan's work has often been compared to that of Aubrey Beardsley, but in Egan's case, the feeling of decadence is a reflection of his disgust - he wrote that "What I do is in revulsion - to shock by the power of satire!"". (Alan Horne, The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators, pp.175-176).