zoom

In Powder and Crinoline
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Illustrated by Kay Nielsen. Hodder & Stoughton, 1913.

Number 127 of 500 copies signed by the artist, 26 tipped-in colour plates and illustrations by Kay Nielsen, captioned tissue guards, pastedowns and endpapers lightly foxed, original pictorial green dyed vellum, gilt.

B-A Note: In searching for additional information, I came across Nocloo which has scanned many of the lovely illustrations from this book. And I now have another interesting website to browse.

zoom

ghoulnextdoor:

NYPL Digital Gallery | The Goblin Spider, translated by Hearn, Lafcadio
(the whole book is available in the NYPL Gallery)

I do believe this is my second choice for a Halloween costume.  Still open to ideas, though!

zoom

yama-bato:

indigodreams:

Baby’s Own Aesop (1887) Walter Crane

zoom

Fairy Book: Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations. Dulac, Edmond. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1916].

15 tipped-in color plates. 4to. Original pictorial cloth gilt. Limited edition, no 300 of 350 copies signed by Dulac

Edmund Dulac (born Edmond Dulac, October 22, 1882 – May 25, 1953) was a French book illustrator prominent during the so called “Golden Age of Illustration” (the first quarter or so of the twentieth century). His enchanting illustrations grace such hard-to-find classics as his Fairy Book, Arabian Nights, Sinbad the Sailor, and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

zoom

Davy and the Goblin
Carryl, Charles E. Boston, Ticknor and Co, 1886.

First Edition. 160, [1], + xvi ad pp. Woodcut illustrations. (Large 8vo) original green cloth stamped in gilt and black.

zoom

FIENDS,GHOSTS,AND SPRITES. Including an account of the origin and nature of belief in the supernatural. Radcliffe, John Netten. London, Richard Bentley, 1854. FIRST EDITION.8vo.Publisher’s green wave-grain cloth,covers blocked in blind,spine lettered and decorated in gilt all over,cream endpapers,edges untrimmed.

Radcliffe was to become a leading epidemiologist and public health activist.The present work was written while he still was at the Leeds school of medicine,before he entered service in the Crimea as a surgeon attached to the headquarters of Omar Pasha.The text includes learned discussions of comparative folklore,ghosts,dreams and modern spiritualism,with an appendix reprinting Extracts from Professor Faraday’s Letter on Table Moving,from the Athenaeum,1853.The spine-lettering identifies it as part of the “Parlour Book-case

via biblio.com

zoom

The fairy’s search, and other poems Smith, Emeline S. New York: Nafis & Cornish, 1847.

First edition. In addition to the titular piece, in which a fairy seeks the lost flowers that formerly made up her bower, this volume includes “The American Indians,” “Removal of the Remains of Napoleon,” and “Ode for the 4th of July.” Binding: Publisher’s horizontally gilt-striped brown textured cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped fairy vignette and back one with similar vignette in blind; spine with gilt title and gilt-stamped decorations top to bottom. All edges gilt.

via PRBM

zoom

The Blue Fairy Book Lang, Andrew. London, Longmans Green & Co, 1903. First Edition. First in a series of twelve Fairy books, published between 1889 and 1910.

Many people in the late Victorian era considered traditional fairytales to be unfit for children because of their brutal and violent themes, so English collections of fairytales were rare during this period. Lang, on the other hand, grew up reading classic fairy tales during his childhood in the rural Scottish Borders and he believed that the next generation of children should not be subjected to the dreamy, gentle, flower-orientated fairy tales that were popular at the time.

More about Andrew Lang at the 12-volume Fairy Book series at Abe Books.

zoom

The Crimson Fairy Book Lang, Andrew. London, Longmans Green & Co, 1903. First Edition. Eighth in a series of twelve Fairy books, published between 1889 and 1910.

Many people in the late Victorian era considered traditional fairytales to be unfit for children because of their brutal and violent themes, so English collections of fairytales were rare during this period. Lang, on the other hand, grew up reading classic fairy tales during his childhood in the rural Scottish Borders and he believed that the next generation of children should not be subjected to the dreamy, gentle, flower-orientated fairy tales that were popular at the time.

More about Andrew Lang at the 12-volume Fairy Book series at Abe Books.

zoom

theshipthatflew:

(via yama-bato)

FAIRY TALES. ROYAL ILLUMINATED BOOK OF NURSERY RHYMES (SECOND SERIES) the old familiar words set to music; arranged in an early style suited to little Minstrels. Edinborough: William P. Nimmo no date, circa 1890. Oblong 8vo, (8 x 5 3/4”), purple cloth elaborately stamped in black and orange, spine faded, front joint rubbed, VG. Containing Jack and Jill, Mother Hubbard and her Dog, Four Nursery Rhymes, Little Man and his Little Gun, Little Miss Muffet, and more. Illustrated with very 16 beautiful page color plates highlighted in gold and including musical notation to accompany the rhymes.

zoom

Dealings With the Fairies MacDonald, George. 1st Edition US. New York: George Routledge and Sons Limited n.d. 1891. Octavo 13x19cm. 284pp 2pp ads. First US edition issued 24 years after the first British edition by Strahan. Original blue cloth over bevelled boards front board and spine decorated in black and gilt. Patterned floral endpapers. Illustrations in black & white. via Powell’s Rare Books

George MacDonald (December 10, 1824 September 18, 1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. Though no longer a household name, his works (particularly his fairy tales and fantasy novels) have inspired deep admiration in such notables as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle. C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his “master”. Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day in a train station, he began to read; “a few hours later,” said Lewis, “I knew I had crossed a great frontier.” text via amazon.com

zoom

oldbookillustrations:

Front cover of More English fairy tales, collected and edited by Joseph Jacobs, and illustrated by John D. Batten. New York, London, 1894.
Via archive.org.

zoom

The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home Dickens, Charles. London, Bradbury and Evans, 1846.

8], 174 + [2] ad pp. Illustrated with engravings after D. Maclise, R. Doyle, C. Stanfield, John Leech, and E. Landseer, including steel-engraved frontispiece and added title. 16.2x10.3 cm. (6½x4”), full tan calf, spine gilt, red morocco label, all edges gilt, original front, rear and spine cloth bound in at rear. First Edition.

via pba galleries

zoom

graveyarddirt:

First British edition of Russian Wonder Tales by Post Wheeler, illustrated by Ivan Bilibin and published by Adam and Charles Black, London in 1912. Printed by Billing and Sons Ltd, Guildford. Hardback, black cloth boards with coloured designs plus gilt lettering to front and spine, top edges gilt, colour frontispiece with tissue guard, 11 further colour plates (all on coated paper), two-colour decorative title page, xvi, 334 pages. Approximate size 8.2 x 6 inches (20.8 x 15.3 cm).

This uncommon collection of Russian fairy tales includes the distinctive work of Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942), one of the most influential illustrators and stage designers of the 2oth century. Born in St Petersburg, and a student of the Russian artist Ilya Repin, he first gained renown in 1899 with his illustrations for a series of Russian fairy tales (a selection of which appears in this book). He went on to design the 1909 production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel in Moscow, among others, and helped stage numerous operas and ballets in Paris, where he lived for some years. The twelve beautiful illustrations in this volume demonstrate the influence of Russian folklore and folk arts on Bilibin’s work, as well as his interest in traditional Japanese prints and the Art Nouveau style.

zoom

graveyarddirt:

First edition of The Magic Casement: A Book of Faëry Poems Giving Glimpses of the World Beyond the Casement, selected and arranged with introduction and notes by Alfred Noyes. Illustrated by Stephen Reid and published by Chapman & Hall Ltd in 1908 (undated; date according to British Library catalogue). Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited, London. Hardback, red cloth boards with gilt lettering and decorations to front and spine, side and lower edges uncut, 4 full-page drawings (including frontispiece and title page), 26 smaller drawings, xx, 391 pages. Approximate size 7.9 x 5.7 inches (20 x 14.5 cm).

This comprehensive, wide-ranging anthology of fairy poetry features a beautiful Art Nouveau binding plus 30 delicate line drawings by the Scottish painter and illustrator Stephen Reid (1873-1948). Reid was born in Aberdeen, where he studied at Gray’s School of Art before going on to the Royal Scottish Academy Schools in Edinburgh. By 1899 he was in London, where he exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists, of which he was a member. He painted historical and mythological subjects, as well as portraits and landscapes, and worked as an illustrator, contributing to magazines such as The Strand and to children’s books including Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster (1909) and Famous Voyages of the Great Discoverers (1910).

The contents include some 80 poems, both well known and more obscure, grouped into eight sections: The Fairy Life, Witches’ Cauldrons and Blasted Heaths, Come Unto these Yellow Sands, Flower-Fairies, Enchanted Woods, Airy Mountain and Rushy Glen, The Faery Voyager, and Last Echoes. Alfred Noyes provides an eight-page introduction, as well as the occasional footnote.

Authors include: William Shakespeare, John Lyly, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Michael Drayton, George Darley, Rudyard Kipling, G.K. Chesterton, Tom Hood, R.C. Lehmann, Alfred Noyes, Sydney Dobell, Theodore Watts-Dunton, John Milton, Sir Walter Scott, John Todhunter, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson (The Witches’ Sabbath), Robert Burns, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (The Horns of Elfland and others), Fiona Macleod, Matthew Arnold, William Browne, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Philip Bourke Marston, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Keats, S.T. Coleridge, William Morris (Rapunzel), Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market and The Dead Princess), William Allingham, Sir Samuel Ferguson, W.B. Yeats (The Stolen Child), and Sir Theodore Martin.