Yellow and White.

London: John Lane; Roberts Bros., Boston,, 1895. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the publisher to his close friend, "Dr Pritchard from J.L." on the front free endpaper. The recipient was Dr Owen Pritchard, a fellow bibliophile who owned a house at 37 Southwick Street where he ran a successful practice. When John Lane was searching for new lodgings, Dr Pritchard offered him a room to rent above his surgery: "When, years afterwards, he [Lane] had become a successful publisher... he was still paying Pritchard ten shillings a week! Pritchard was a generous, large-hearted man. He would not put the rent up on a friend" (May, p. 29). After John Lane passed away, his nephews, Allen, Richard, and John, moved into the lodgings above Dr Pritchard's surgery. The Lane brothers founded Penguin Books in 1935. Yellow and White was the 16th book in Lane's Keynotes Series. Comprising 33 novels and short story collections, the series was published by John Lane between 1893 and 1897 in a distinctive format, featuring Aubrey Beardsley's cover designs and embellishments; Beardsley produced the designs for 22 Keynotes volumes while he was working on The Yellow Book, which John Lane was also publishing. The Keynotes series shared a close relationship with the progressive literary trends of 1890s, emphasised by Beardsley's fashionable cover designs. Octavo. Original yellow cloth, spine lettered in gilt, key monogram to spine and rear board, titles and floral panel to cover in pink, all designed by Aubrey Beardsley, top edge trimmed, others untrimmed. Title page design by Aubrey Beardsley. Spine toned with rubbing to ends, couple of tips bumped, a little fading to pink titles and decoration, offsetting to endpapers, clean and bright internally. A very good copy. Lasner 40; J. Lewis May, "John Lane And The Nineties", John Lane the Bodley Head, p.29; Wendell V. Harris, "John Lane's Keynotes Series and the Fiction of the 1890's", PMLA, Vol. 83, No. 5 (Oct., 1968), p. 1411.