Description
Hard cover, 8vo, in red pictorial cloth cover printed with a green and gold border, the tiles blocked in gold, and with a vignette picture of a shepherdess playing music upon a lawn. Top edge gilt. (Cover design not by JMK.) Series description: ""with 8 photogravures and 3 halftone illustrations after Jessie M. King."" Printed on japon (or vellum like paper) with two King-illustrated halftone title pages, one being a list of the players. Stage directions and the play's text are interspersed with tissue-guarded full page illustrations by Glasgow, Scotland's JESSIE MARION KING(1875-1945), done in her earliest, most collectible, illustration style of delicate pen and ink drawings of various attenuated, waif-like symbolist figures within an illustrated frame incorporating hand-lettering and the artist's signature. 84 pp. First edition. CONDITION: Very Good Plus. Some spots to boards (seen in the right light only) and a few bubbles to the cloth. Moderate toning to pages. **King's work did much to define the Glasgow School of Art's Art Nouveau Style in the 1890's. She was a contemporary of Charles Rennie McIntosh, and one of the Glasgow Girls artist group along with Katherine Cameron. King would teach art and book design at the GSA. A lengthy freelance career followed, during which her designs were applied to jewelry, pottery and fabric. She and her husband E.A. Taylor would spawn a thriving artist's colony in her native Kirkubright, as well as in Paris. **Milton's ""Comus,"" first performed at Christmastide, 1634, has been described as a morality play about the conflict of good and evil and the overcoming of temptation. It was designed as a theatre piece in honor of, and featuring in real life, the Earl of Bridgewater's two sons and daughter as actors. It was performed on the occasion of the Earl's appointment by the English King Charles I to President of Wales, and performed at Ludlow Castle. As such, the setting description has definite Celtic overtones, albeit admixed with much Elysian reference to the godly provenance of some characters. It remains a beautiful piece of poetry, rewarding the Lady for her ability to remain faithful to her family and virtue, despite numerous temptations. REF: C. White, ""A Guide to the Printed Work of Jessie Marion King,"" (2007), B71, p. 40. First Edition, part of The Photograveur and Colour Series.
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