ERAGNY PRESS. JONSON, Ben. ~ Songs by Ben Jonson. A Selection from the Plays, Masques, and Poems with the earliest known settings of certain numbers.
Wood engraved frontispiece in four colours, border and initials designed by Lucien Pissarro and engraved by Lucien and Esther Pissarro. One of 175 copies, printed in red and black in Brook and music type on Arches Eragny watermarked paper. 8vo., quarter bound in blue/grey paper with title in gilt upper left, speedwell patterned paper covered boards in geen and blue. A couple of small tears to the joints, the usual browning to the free endpapers, otherwise a very good, clean copy.
Although well received by subscribers, this book was a financial disaster for the Pissarros who had to lay off their printer Thomas Taylor and borrow money from Lucien's family.
With the 1922 ownership inscription of Thomas Balston was from the Balston papermaking family and a director of Duckworth the publisher. He was a keen scholar of English book production and illustration and particularly interested in wood engraving producing books like ‘English wood engraving 1900-1950’ and most famously ‘The Wood Engravings of Robert Gibbings’ in 1949.
Later booklabel of D.G. Bridson.