Cecil Beaton's New York [ASSOCIATION COPY]

[Cecil Beaton]


A first edition of Beaton's witty and glamourous snapshot of Manhattan in the 1930s. Cecil Beaton first sailed to New York in November 1928, it was the first of many annual trips he was to take, spending the winter in a hotel in Manhattan creating portraits and fashion photographs for Condé Nast. It was in New York that Beaton steadily built up a reputation as a leading international photographer, American society embraced him enthusiastically and he was able to earn significant sums of money. Cecil's Beaton's New York is a personal account of the city - its style, exuberance, diversity, people and culture. Beaton translates the visual impressions he has gained from New York into written prose. He talks about the weather, the architecture, transport, the food, the press, crime, the museums, the theatres, and society figures. The text is accompanied by numerous black-and-white photographs and line drawings by Beaton, supplemented with additional press photos and images by photographers such as E. O. Hoppé, Higdon Cato and Ben Sahn.
 
This copy inscribed by Beaton to Peter - 'To Dear Peter, thank you for getting  this Book. Affectionately Cecil', followed by his often used loopy paraph. It is tempting to conjecture that Peter is Peter Watson, with whom Beaton was besotted with during the 1930s. By 1938 the relationship had largely broken down. Alternatively, Peter could be the writer Peter Quennell. Quennell would write the commentary for Beaton's Time Exposure, published three years later in 1941.


Cecil Beaton. B.T. Batsford Ltd. London. 1938. First edition. Inscribed in ink to the front free endpaper by Beaton to 'Peter' - 'To Dear Peter / Thank you for getting / this Book - / Affectionately / Cecil'. Hardback, octavo; yellow cloth-bound boards, black title to front board and spine, without dust jacket. viii, 261 pages. Colour frontispiece, over 100 b&w photographs and line-drawings within the text. English. 230 x 160mm. 0.8kg. . Good; some light wear to boards, some light soiling to cloth, browning to spine, some spotting to first and last few pages, browning to top edge, later owner's ink signature to front pastedown.