The Quest of the Golden Girl

Complete and unabridged, with 51 full-page plates by William Orpen, Harold Gilman and Gwen John. A man of thirty leaves London on foot to find the ideal woman, and meets several who are not her — a barmaid, a widow, a girl in a wood — while talking to the reader about books, wine and the folly of the whole enterprise. Le Gallienne was the beautiful young poet of the 1890s, long-haired, in the Yellow Book circle and close to Wilde; this 1896 bestseller is that decade's charm distilled, and it knows exactly how silly it is. Fifty-one plates, among them work by Edvard Munch and William Rothenstein, range across portraits, studies and landscapes that share the restless, searching mood of the open road.