BEATON, Cecil. The Book of Beauty. London: Duckworth, 1930. 4° (280 x 218mm). 27 black and white photographs, colour frontispiece, and numerous line illustrations, all after Beaton. (Some spotting.) Original cream-coloured cloth, spine lettered in blue, upper side lettered in blind, original photo-illustrated dust-jacket (jacket chipped and soiled, and with old repairs from verso, some tears, lower edges of boards bumped, spine foot lightly frayed).

BEATON, Cecil. The Book of Beauty. London: Duckworth, 1930. 4° (280 x 218mm). 27 black and white photographs, colour frontispiece, and numerous line illustrations, all after Beaton. (Some spotting.) Original cream-coloured cloth, spine lettered in blue, upper side lettered in blind, original photo-illustrated dust-jacket (jacket chipped and soiled, and with old repairs from verso, some tears, lower edges of boards bumped, spine foot lightly frayed).

FIRST EDITION, IN THE VERY RARE DUST-JACKET, and in a binding varying from both the deluxe and trade issues. ABPC records no copy in dust-jacket at auction in over 35 years. Beaton spent decades contributing to American, French and British Vogue, helping package the very essence of elegance, particularly in its pre-war incarnation, and selling millions of magazine in the process. By the end of the 1920s Beaton had already had sittings with all that he aspired to photograph: Tallulah Bankhead, Nancy Cunard, Norma Shearer -- all, except Queen Mary and Virginia Woolf.