A Child's Garden of Verses [Rare First Edition, First Issue, Fine, Jessie Willcox Smith] by Smith, J.W. Stevenson, Robert Louis - 1905

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905. First edition. First edition. Original black cloth with color pictorial insert on cover, gilt lettering on spine, color pictorial endpapers. Color illustrated title page, 12 full page color plates, tissue guarded, with captions, line drawings throughout, all by Jessie Willcox Smith. Arguably her finest and most heralded illustrated book. The rare First Issue, satisfying all the points in Nudelman A22: a) MCMV on title-page, b) No Scribner colophon on copyright page, c) insert impression measures 21.8 cm, d) "Charles Scribner's Sons" on copyright page measures 3.1 cm vs. 2.6 on later issues, e) cover insert with heavy gilt in sky, and f) "Scribner's" on spine at very bottom, lower than later issues. Also, top edges gilt (later editions lacking), others untrimmed. Black cloth with gilt lettering on spine, full-size color cover insert, illustrated endpapers, illustrated title-page, twelve full-page color plates with captioned tissue guards bound-in, all by Jessie Willcox Smith. A truly fine copy, the nicest we have ever seen.