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Buccaneers Rough Verse, The
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912. Item #02961
"Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum! They Smell the Blood of an Englishman"
With a Color Frontispiece by Howard Pyle
A Presentation Copy from the Author
[PYLE, Howard, illustrator]. SEITZ, Don C. The Buccaneers Rough Verse. By Don C. Seitz. With frontispiece and decorations by Howard Pyle. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912.
First edition. Octavo (8 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches; 222 x 147 mm.). xii, 53, [1 blank] pp. Mounted color frontispiece and two text illustrations.
Publishers black cloth, front cover with an additional Howard Pyle color plate (a smaller version of the color plate "Buried Treasure" from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates, 1921) pasted on, lettered in gilt. A near fine copy.
Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to George Wharton Edwards, the noted American impressionist painter, illustrator, and travel writer - an appealing literary and artistic association linking two figures of the American illustrated book tradition.
A spirited collection of thirty-two pirate poems, capturing the romance, bravado, and rough humor of buccaneer lore at a moment when pirate imagery - largely shaped by Pyle himself - dominated the popular imagination. Four of the poems first appeared in the January 1911 issue of Harper’s Magazine, anticipating the book’s publication.
Issued shortly after Howard Pyle’s death in 1911, the volume stands among the last books to include his original illustrations, and its imagery draws directly on the visual language he created and popularized - weathered pirates, buried treasure, and the mythic sea-rover’s world that would define pirate iconography for generations. The pasted-on color plate to the front cover, while not standard, is a striking and period-appropriate enhancement that reinforces the book’s pictorial appeal.
An engaging and uncommon association copy, combining Howard Pyle illustration, Harper & Brothers production, and a signed presentation linking two American artists, making it especially attractive to collectors of Pyle, American illustration, and early twentieth-century literary ephemera.
Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was one of the most influential American illustrators and writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Best known for his richly imaginative books for young readers - especially his tales of pirates, knights, and medieval romance - Pyle effectively created the modern visual language of adventure fiction. Through works such as The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, he shaped enduring popular images that continue to define these genres.
Beyond his own books, Pyle was a formative teacher and mentor, founding the influential Brandywine School of Illustration, and training a generation of major American artists including N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, and Jessie Willcox Smith. His legacy rests equally on his narrative genius, his pictorial imagination, and his decisive role in establishing illustration as a serious American art form.
Price: $350.00