GREENAWAY, Kate

Under the Window

London: George Routledge and Sons, 1879. Item #06436

The First Book Both Written and Illustrated by Kate Greenaway

GREENAWAY, Kate. Under the Window. Pictures & Rhymes for Children. Engraved & Printed by Edmund Evans. London: George Routledge & Sons, [1879].

First edition, second issue, with printer’s ornaments on both sides of “Edmund Evans” on the title-page (p. [5]), and a figure of a young boy on the verso of title-page (p. [6]). Small quarto. 64 pp. Numerous color-printed wood-engraved illustrations in the text.

Original green glazed boards with dark green cloth backstrip. Covers illustrated with little boys and girls wearing cream clothing. All edges stained yellow. Dark green endapers. Some minor rubbing, else a near fine copy.

"The first book in which Kate Greenaway combined her literary and artistic talents. It was an immediate success and established her reputation in Great Britain, Europe, and North America" (Osborne Collection).

“In his Reminiscences (pp. 59-63) Evans tells how Kate Greenaway’s sketches and the verses written for them were offered to him, how he took great pains to ensure that his engravings should reproduce her designs exactly, how his edition of 20,000 copies at six shillings each sold out at once, how Ruskin took her up, and how imitators of her work appeared everywhere. Certainly Evans spared no pains to make Under the Window attractive, from the graceful pictorial cover to the miniature cuts in the table of contents to the larger illustrations of the poems themselves. A child’s world could hardly be more agreeable than it is in this book” (Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England).

Osborne Collection I, p. 64. Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England, 253. Schuster & Engen 201 (1b). Spielman and Layard, p. 285. Thomson 94b.

Price: $450.00