Books

First Kauffer edition, signed limited issue, number 30 of 35 copies signed by Kauffer, printed on T. H. Saunders mould-made paper, and bound in quarter morocco, aside from 500 numbered copies unsigned on normal paper and bound in cloth. This deluxe signed issue is rare, with only two copies recorded at auction in the past 70 years. Kauffer was born in the United States but settled in England in 1914. He was a member of both Wyndham Lewis's Group X and the Cumberland Market Group. A good painter, Kauffer's real genius was in advertising art; he produced seminal posters for the London Transport Board and for the Great Western Railway, as well as book jackets and illustrations. "Kauffer's sprightly, jazzy, designs were part of the social fabric of progressive, forward-looking Britain in his time" (ODNB). Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was first published in 1719 and is often considered the first English novel. Octavo. Original blue quarter morocco, titles to spine silver, blue buckram boards with Kauffer design in silver to front, edges untrimmed. Frontispiece and 7 hand coloured illustrations by E. McKnight Kauffer, using the pochoir process. Spine sunned, some light scuffing to ends and corners, sound and fresh within, a very good copy indeed. .

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, is one of the earliest and most influential novels in the history of English literature. It is a fictional autobiography of the title character, a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story is widely perceived as a comment on the British Imperialism of the age and the emerging ideology of the 'self-made man', and it reflects on the author's vast array of experiences.