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Golden Age Illustrators
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); IRVING, Washington. Rip Van Winkle.London : 1905
First Rackham edition. The illustrations immediately established Rackham as the leading illustrator of lavishly produced gift books in the Edwardian era. In March 1905 the original watercolours were exhibited at Leicester Galleries, attracting the attention of J. M. Barrie, who then commissioned Rackham's next book, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens...Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); IRVING, Washington. Rip Van Winkle.London : 1905
First Rackham edition. The illustrations immediately established Rackham as the leading illustrator of lavishly produced gift books in the Edwardian era. In March 1905 the original watercolours were exhibited at Leicester Galleries, attracting the attention of J. M. Barrie, who then commissioned Rackham's next book, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens...Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); GRIMM, Jacob & Wilhelm. Little Brother & Little Sister and Other Tales.London : 1917
Signed limited edition, number 114 of 525 copies signed by Rackham. "Here is an ideal conjunction of author and artist - the fairy and folk tales of the Brothers Grimm could not have a more fitting illustrator than Arthur Rackham, nor he more suitable authors to illustrate" (The Bookman).Learn More
DETMOLD, E. J. (illus.) MAETERLINCK, Maurice. The Life of the Bee.London : 1911
First Detmold edition of the Nobel laureate's 1901 classic.Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); SHAKESPEARE, William. The Tempest.London : [1926]
First Rackham edition, in the pleasingly preserved dust jacket. The scholar Fred Gettings stated that three of the plates, "'Come unto these yellow sands'; 'The isle is full of noises', and the fine 'Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears', reach near perfection, and in so doing point a new quality in Rackham's work"...Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); SHAKESPEARE, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream.New York : 1908
First American Rackham edition, in which the artist "developed his gift for drawing witches, gnomes, fairies, and anthropomorphized trees and brought them to a pitch of vivid characterization, sometimes with an unsettling frisson of horror" (ODNB). It was published in Britain earlier the same year.Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); GRAHAME, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows.London : 1951
First UK edition, number 329 of 500 copies. This is the 100th edition of Grahame's classic, originally published in 1908.
Rackham's illustrations first appeared in the Limited Editions Club edition. "During his last illness Rackham worked on illustrations to... The Wind in the Willows, a book for which he had a strong affection, and which...Learn More
POGANY, Willy (illus.); GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.London : 1908
First Pogany edition. Felmingham considers Pogany one of the best of the gift book illustrators (The Illustrated Gift Book, p. 60). This edition employed a new method for printing illustrations, where permanent inks were printed on pure uncoated paper.Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); LA MOTTE-FOUQUÉ, Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Freiherr de. Undine.London : 1909
First Rackham edition, deluxe issue, number 495 of 1,000 copies signed by the illustrator. This publication "was still another step forward for Rackham, the unity of conception in the line drawings and the colour plates, and the assertion of contrast in the moods of the heroine, rendered it a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding" (Hudson, p....Learn More
POGANY, Willy (illus.); COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.London : [1910]
First Pogány edition, signed extra limited issue, number 23 of 25 copies signed by the artist. Pogány's illustrated edition of Coleridge's famous long poem is one of the artist's most lavish undertakings and was clearly inspired by the grand medieval tradition of book illustration.
This extra limited issue was "for sale in England and...Learn More
FLINT, William Russell (illus.). The Book of Tobit and History of Susanna.London : 1929
First Flint edition, deluxe issue, number 42 of 100 copies issued with the additional suite of four colour plates, retained here in the original folder. There were also 875 copies of the trade edition and 12 copies printed on vellum and signed by the artist.
William Russell Flint contributed to a number of early 20th-century editions of the...Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur. Mother Goose.London : 1913
Signed limited edition, number 846 of 1,130 copies signed by the artist, presented here in a handsome binding by the Chelsea Bindery.
One contemporary reviewer noted that if Rackham's "present series of drawings illustrating Mother Goose had come before the public unheralded by the many successes he has already achieved, he would again have...Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); RUSKIN, John. The King of the Golden River.London : 1932
Signed limited edition, number 328 of 570 copies signed by the artist. Ruskin's story was originally conceived in 1841, and written for his future wife, Effie Gray: "Effie first met her future husband when she was twelve, on a visit to Herne Hill. The following year, 1841, on a second visit, she challenged him to write a fairy story"...Learn More
DULAC, Edmund (illus.). Sinbad the Sailor & Other Stories from The Arabian Nights.London : 1914
First Dulac edition, an exquisitely decorated and illustrated collection of stories from the Arabian Nights, comprising "Sinbad the Sailor", "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp", "The Story of the Three Calendars", and "The Sleeper Awakened". Loosely inserted is a flyer from Leicester Galleries advertising the sale of the original watercolours.Learn More
BEARDSLEY, Aubrey - PENNELL, Joseph. Aubrey Beardsley and Other Men of the Nineties.Philadelphia : 1924
First edition, number 79 of 100 hand-numbered copies only, printing the "lecture delivered at the Brooklyn Museum of Science and Art on the occasion of the Beardsley exhibition, November 1923" (title page).
Provenance: William Andrew Clark Jr. (1877-1934), a philanthropist who funded the construction of the Clark Library, California, in...Learn More
GOBLE, Warwick (illus.). Folk Tales of Bengal.London : 1912
First Goble edition. Inspired by the philological investigations of the brothers Grimm, Lal Behari Day, a reverend linked to the Free Church of Scotland, gathered these tales from Bengal's expansive oral storytelling tradition, speaking to an elderly Christian woman, brahmins, a barber, and a former servant.
Day (1824-1894) dedicated his...Learn More
DETMOLD, Edward Julius (illus.). The Arabian Nights.London : [1924]
Signed limited edition, number 85 of 100 copies signed by the illustrator. An impressive example from the golden age of book illustration, this collection includes the tales of Ali Baba, Sindbad the Sailor, and Aladdin.Learn More
DETMOLD, E. J. (illus.); FABRE, Jean-Henri. Fabre's Book of Insects.London : [1921]
First Detmold edition, translated from Fabre's French entomological work of 1879, and with attractive illustrations "heavily influenced by the works of Japanese masters (notably Hiroshige and Hokusai) while adhering to the conventions of art nouveau" (ODNB).Learn More
ROBINSON, W. Heath (illus.); SHAKESPEARE, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream.London : 1914
Signed limited edition, number 85 of 250 copies signed by the artist. This is one of only 100 copies from the first issue, bound in full vellum; the rest of the signed limited edition was issued in quarter cloth in 1919.Learn More
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.). Grimm's Fairy Tales.London : 1909
Signed limited edition, number 148 of 750 copies signed by the artist. This is a revised and enlarged edition of the work originally published in 1900, with some new illustrations, as well as others redrawn and coloured.
As noted by Rodney Engen, "Rackham greatly loved fairy tales and had collected his many favourites over the years. The...Learn More
