Fairy Tales. - 1932

Philadelphia: David McKay Company,, 1932. Scarce with both dust jacket and box First US trade edition, first printing, complete with the publisher's box unique to the US edition. As noted by Derek Hudson in 1960, this became "one of the most difficult of Rackham's books to buy" (p. 134). The title page and jacket both provide the name of the UK publisher, Harrap. David McKay, the US publisher, appears on the spine. Considered among his finest work, "Rackham's illustrations to Grimm, Hans Andersen or Poe show him at his most imaginative and observant of human nature" (Hamilton, p. 11). When the Observer invited Hugh Walpole to choose the best picture book of 1932, he awarded the accolade "without hesitation to Rackham's Hans Andersen... He has risen nobly to his subject. He has acquired a new tenderness and grace. His fantasy is stronger than ever" (ibid., pp. 133-4). The stories, which were chosen by Rackham, include "The Snow Queen", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Tinder-Box", "The Little Mermaid", "The Princess and the Pea", "The Little Mermaid", and "The Emperor's New Clothes". Quarto. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered and decorated in gilt, pink and white pictorial endpapers, top edge edge. With dust jacket and publisher's pictorial box. Colour frontispiece and 11 similar plates, with captioned tissue guards, black and white illustrations in the text, all by Rackham. Head of jacket spine very slightly worn with adhesive tape repair to reverse, spine slightly toned, price-clipped; restoration to box lid joints, minor soiling to lower box: a fine copy with near-fine jacket and box. Latimore & Haskell, p. 68; Riall, p. 177; James Hamilton, Arthur Rackham: a Life with Illustration, 1990; Derek Hudson, Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work, 1960.