The Children's Life of the Bee by Maeterlinck, Maurice; Sutro, Alfred (Ed.); Williams, Herschel (Ed.); Detmold, Edward J. (Illust.) - 1919

New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919. First Edition. Hardcover. Good +. First Edition. Hardcover. "I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I learned to love the bees..." So begins this beautifully illustrated edition, adapted for an audience of all ages, of this classic ode to our most important pollinators by the Belgian playwright, essayist, and poet Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature. Open these bee-bedecked covers and you'll find a swarm of details about day to day life in a beehive, from the the life of the Queen to the mathematics behind her hive's construction, from the division of labor among bees to the meaning and movement of the swarm they make together. The Children's Life of the Bee is the wholesome and edifying product of the poetry, philosophy, and beekeeping experience of Maurice Maeterlinck, further sweetened by Edward J. Detmold's 5 dreamy color plates.

Chapters include: On the Threshold of the Hive, The Swarm, The Foundation of the City, The Young Queens, The Massacre of the Males, and The Progress of the Race.

8 1/4" X 5 5/8". 192pp. Bound in deep sky blue cloth over boards, with large color pictorial label to upper board of hive and honeycomb, lettered in gilt to upper board and spine. Mild wear to binding, with some bumping to extremities and dimming to gilt at sunned spine. Hinges a touch tender; binding remains sound. Dust soiling to endpapers. Inscription pencilled to front free endpaper: "I found they had just one of these left so I wnated Jack and Betty to have it. Lida." Foxing to title page and frontispiece, and lightly to margins of plates throughout, else pages are clean and unmarked. Illustrated in color frontispiece and 4 color plates by Edward J. Detmold.