La Belle Dame Sans Merci

(Shaker Heights, OH): Wind and Harlot Press, 1986. Delrue, Paul C.. 12pp. One of twenty-three copies. Keats's ballad of a knight wooed by a beautiful and wild "faery's child" and then abandoned by her, haggard and pale, on the cold hillside. In a designer binding by Paul Delrue depicting the setting at the poem's beginning and end: the countryside after harvest has ended, a barren and empty landscape with a sloping hill and the silhouettes of birds overhead. A rustic fence borders the pale green, tan, and brown fields, all created using Delrue's signature "Lacunose artwork." In this technique, Delrue covered the boards first with tan goatskin, and then many layers of leather in autumnal hues, some puckered and others flat, were overlapped and alternately sanded down smooth and varnished with PVA to create various effects. The Lacunose panels are set onto the goatskin background intentionally askew, echoing the knight's disorientation, and bordered by blind-stamped circles. The endpapers are grey and violet paper handmade by the artist with flecks of gold and silver. In a handmade-paper chemise and a cloth and handmade paper-covered box with a gusseted pocket for the book. Extremely fine. (3 by 2 1/8; 77x53mm).