The Spirit of Paris

Paul Cohen-Portheim. Jacket design by Cecil Beaton.

B. T. Batsford. London. May 1937. First edition. Hardback, octavo; magenta cloth-bound boards, gilt title to spine, dust jacket. x, 118 pages; 32 page catalogue of Batsford books. Photographic endpapers, colour frontispiece and 133 b&w hors texte photographs, many full-page. English. 220 x 150mm. 0.6kg. . Very good, in very good dust jacket; slight shelf wear to jacket, light ruffling to spine ends and forecorners, short 1cm tear to base of spine, publisher's discreet price-sticker to front flap, slight toning to spine; slight lean to spine, light spotting to edges and endpapers.

In May 1937 B.T. Batsford posthumously published Paul Cohen-Portheim’s The Spirit of Paris. The guide to the French capital had first been published in Cohen Portheim’s native German in 1930 and this new English edition complemented his The Spirit of London, issued by Batsford two years earlier. The book encourages the Parisian visitor to see beyond the usual tourist destinations and night spots, and to emulate instead the daily lives of the capital’s residents. 134 photographs, including four by Beaton and several by Brassaï, illustrate the text. The Spirit of Paris is significant for its attractive wrap-around dust jacket design by Beaton. It features a collage of Parisian landmarks and street scenes in a bright palette of colours. A few months later Beaton would publish his own book with Batsford, Cecil Beaton’s Scrapbook, with a similar impactful wrap-around jacket.