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.
Shakespeare’s Comedy of Twelfth Night or What You Will
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908. Item #06563
The Deluxe Signed Twelfth Night
With Forty Mounted Color Plates by W. Heath Robinson
[ROBINSON, W. Heath, illustrator]. SHAKESPEARE, [William]. Shakespeare’s Comedy of Twelfth Night, or What You Will. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1908].
Edition de Luxe. Limited to 350 numbered copies signed by the artist (this copy No. 44).
Large quarto (11 1/4 x 8 7/8 inches; 286 x 226 mm.). [2, limitation leaf], xxiv, 143, [1] pp. Forty mounted color plates (including frontispiece), each on dark green stock and with descriptive tissue guards. Pictorial title, five vignette half-titles, and vignette tail-piece.
Original vellum over boards, pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt on front cover and spine, top edge gilt, others uncut, dark green endpapers. Original yellow silk ties intact. Boards slightly bowed, as usual with vellum, but an exceptionally bright and well-preserved copy. Engraved bookplate of book collector Gwendolen Jefferson on the front paste-down. We have found records of several other books with her bookplate.
A particularly handsome example of one of the most appealing illustrated Shakespeares of the Edwardian period. In this sumptuous de luxe issue, W. Heath Robinson departs from strict narrative illustration in favor of a more atmospheric and interpretive approach. Rather than depicting the principal dramatic episodes, he focuses on the lyrical and musical elements of the play - especially the songs - capturing the mood, wit, and underlying melancholy of Twelfth Night with a lightness and imaginative freedom that distinguishes his work from that of his contemporaries.
By this stage in his career, Robinson was experimenting with subtler effects of light and tone, producing illustrations that are at once decorative and evocative, with a distinctly impressionistic quality. The result is a visual interpretation that complements Shakespeare’s text not by literal translation, but by suggestion and atmosphere.
The mounted plates, printed on dark green stock, heighten the decorative richness of the volume, while the vellum binding underscores its status as a luxury production of the Hodder & Stoughton Shakespeare series.
A scarce signed limitation - particularly desirable in such bright condition, with the fragile silk ties preserved.
Price: $1,750.00