I just read an Ebook (thanks for the freebie,
Project Gutenberg) edition of
True History, by Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian author of the second century A.D. It's a series of tall stories about a sea voyage, which the author assures us at the beginning is nothing but lies. It was apparently never finished.
I'd never heard of this writer before yesterday. I was going through a book on Aubrey Beardsley by Robert Ross, which includes some 85 of Beardsley's drawings. Three of these were for the
True History. so I looked it up, then downloaded it.
The Ebook edition of Lucian has a number of illustrations, two by Beardsley, and more by J.B. Clark and William Strang. Two of the ones in Ross's book are noted as having been "suppressed".
An interesting (to me) example of how one thing leads to another.
My copy of Ross's book, by the way, is a hardcover edition that was printed in 1967; the original was published in 1909. I can't find out much about Ross himself, except that he was a friend of Beardsley's who moved in the same social circles. This is one of a number of art books that inherited from my parents, but I had never given it more than a brief glance before. I recall that my mother had an edition of
Le Morte d'Arthur with Beardsley's illustrations, but she gave that away some years ago to a friend. From what Ross says, that was not actually the artist's favorite work, but I liked it. A book of just his illustrations from that work is available separately, and I've ordered a used copy of that, since I already have a different edition of Thomas Mallory.
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