1926 Limited Edtn 1/1650 BENITO CERENO HERMAN MELVILLE McKNIGHT KAUFFER Hb VGC.

Benito Cereno

Melville, Herman. Kauffer, E McKnight Kauffer, illustrator

Published by The Nonesuch Press, 16 Great James Street, London, 1926

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. First edition with these Kauffer illustrations, one of 1650 numbered copies (this being #1100). 4to. 122pp. Full buckram, lettered in gold to spine. Front board has splash marks. Book is square and tight, corners sharp. With a title-page design, one headpiece, one tailpiece and seven splendid full-page illustrations, all hand-coloured through stencils, by E.McKnight Kauffer. Printed at the Curwen Press upon Van Gelder paper. Free endpapers very lightly offset. Very good indeed, albeit lacking the dust wrapper.

Melville's novella concerning a slave revolt on a Spanish merchant ship was first serialized in Putnam's Monthly in 1855 and subsequently a slightly revised version appeared in his 1856 collection 'The Piazza Tales'. This McKnight Kauffer-illustrated edition did not appear for a further seventy years, but is certainly worth the wait.