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Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales
London: [Hodder & Stoughton Limited for] Boots the Chemist, 1927. Item #06649
Heath Robinson’s Enchanting Andersen - Extra-Illustrated with Ten Edmund Dulac Plates
ROBINSON, W. Heath, illustrator]. ANDERSEN, Hans [Christian]. Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. With Illustrations by W. Heath Robinson. London: [Hodder & Stoughton Limited for] Boots the Chemist, [1927].
New edition. Quarto (9 5/8 x 7 3/8 inches; 245 x 187 mm.). 319, [1] pp. Pictorial title-page, sixteen mounted color plates, thirty-seven full-page and fifty-eight smaller black and white drawings. Ten additional mounted color plates by Edmund Dulac have been bound-in.
Bound ca. 1960 in full red morocco over boards, covers double-ruled in gilt, spine with five raised bands, decoratively ruled and lettered in gilt in compartments, gilt-ruled turn-ins, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Spine slightly faded, otherwise fine.
This richly illustrated edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s enduring fairy tales brings together the imaginative brilliance of W. Heath Robinson at the height of his powers. Commissioned following the success of Bill the Minder, Robinson approached Andersen’s stories with a renewed emphasis on their charm and warmth, producing a series of color plates that rank among the finest of his career - graceful, whimsical, and suffused with a delicate balance between the fantastical and the familiar. Particularly memorable are his renderings of Tommelise (Thumbelina), where the tiny heroine inhabits a vividly realized natural world, interacting with creatures depicted with striking realism. The present copy is further distinguished by the inclusion of ten additional mounted color plates by Edmund Dulac, one of the great masters of the Golden Age of Illustration, whose jewel-like compositions provide a compelling and harmonious counterpoint to Robinson’s vision, enhancing the volume into a uniquely attractive and desirable illustrated Andersen.
"Following the publication of Bill the Minder, Constable asked Heath Robinson to illustrate a new edition of Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, to be published in a similar format. It was the third time that Heath Robinson had illustrated Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales and he said that this time he attempted to bring out the happier aspects of the stories.
Geoffrey Beare, The Illustrations of W. Heath Robinson, p. 126; John Lewis, Heath Robinson, p. 216; Langston Day, The Life and Art of W. Heath Robinson, p. 269.
Price: $650.00