I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Wonder Book, A
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922. Item #03901
One of Six Hundred Copies Signed by Arthur Rackham
[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. A Wonder Book. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922.
Deluxe Edition, limited to 600 copies (of which this is # 439), signed by the artist.
Large quarto (11 3/16 x 8 7/8 inches; 284 x 227 mm.). viii, 206 pp. Twenty-four color plates, sixteen of which are mounted on cream paper (with descriptive tissue-guards), twenty drawings in black and white.
Publisher's cream cloth over boards, front cover pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, others uncut, pictorial endpapers. Two top corners slightly bumped, otherwise a near fine copy.
"The moment one opens Hawthorne's Wonder Book one becomes aware of the rounding and softening of form in Rackham's work. The modern Pandora of Hawthorne opens her box for the world in 1922, and she is a very living young girl, with breasts just beginning to swell, indicating that Rackham was aware of the undertones of this story which is being retold with every lifetime." (Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p. 121).
Lattimore and Haskell p. 55. Riall p. 146. Gettings p. 179.
Price: $2,850.00