The Kingdom of the Pearl

London: Nisbet, 1925.

Edition deluxe, number 407 of 675 copies "printed for sale in the British Empire". Publisher's quarter buckram over paper-covered boards with pictorial decoration to front cover in silver with printed label. Spine lettered in gilt with further gilt design. Top edge of the pages gilt, others untrimmed. Patterned endpapers. With ten tipped in colour plates by Dulac mounted under captioned tissue-guards. A Fine copy of a somewhat dry title whose illustrations capture Dulac at his "fantastically Persian" best. First published as Royaume de la Perle by Editions Payot, Paris, in 1919. Rosenthal was a Paris jeweller who wished to issue a new edition of the book with illustrations. He commissioned Dulac and duly brought out an new edition of 1500 copies in 1920 via the Piazza of Paris publishing house. Having also acquired the copyright to the ten pictures Rosenthal duly issued an English translation through Nisbet of London followed in 1925 by an American edition with Brentano's. "The 'Pearl' pictures indeed display a ripening of a Dulac style first seen in Sindbad the Sailor, employed in some of his Fairy Book pictures and developed fully in The Tanglewood Tales. It is a Persian miniature style, but made quite his own…His plates, truly genius, do much to bring a fanciful touch to the otherwise stark exposition of a treatise on pearls" - Hughey.