An Alphabet by William Nicholson (1st Trade Edition)

Author: Nicholson, William 
Title: An Alphabet 
Publisher: William Heinemann 
Date: 1898 
Place: London 
Dimensions: Quarto. 31cm x 25.5cm 

1st  trade edition. Unpaginated, 27 leaves. Title plus 26 lithographic prints. 

Pictorial paper covered boards, black titles to spine. Light foxing to endpapers. Offsetting of title page to verso of front endpaper and of plates to opposite pages. Chipping to board edges and spine. Faint coloured crayon marks to both boards.
Publisher’s advertisement for ‘An Almanack of Twelve Sports’ tipped in to rear.

Before he became a well-known painter, William Nicholson was a pioneer of pictorial advertisement and poster design. This was the first of 5 lithographic books he would produce for William Heinemann. The images in this work, as with much of his earlier poster work, are characterised by bold silhouettes and flat colours. The opening image ‘A was an Artist’ is thought to be a self-portrait. Nicholson famously taught painting to Winston Churchill in the 1030s.

A very good minus copy. Internally very good, the images are clean and the colours bright, despite the offsetting and lesser condition of the binding.