Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth & Marvels, The

London: J.M.Dent & Co., 1907. The Second and Best Trade Edition

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. INGOLDSBY, Thomas (pseud. of Richard Harris Barham). The Ingoldsby Legends. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham A.R.W.S. London: J.M. Dent & Co.,1907.

Second (and best) trade edition. Large quarto (9 7/8 x 7 5/8 inches; 251 x 193 mm.). Twenty-four color plates tipped-in on brown stock with captioned tissue guards, twelve tinted plates, and sixty-six drawings in black and white.

Original green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in gilt, pictorial endpapers, tope edge gilt, others uncut. Mild wear to cloth boards, but still a very good copy.

"In 1898 Messrs. Dent and Co. first published 'The Ingoldsby Legends,' with about one hundred illustrations of mine. This book has met with a very satisfactory reception, but the publisher's have felt with me that, with the addition of new drawings, a careful overhauling would make it worthy of publication in a more important form, in which greater prominence could be given to the illustrations by better and larger reproductions, including a greater number of illustrations in colour.

"To this end the following has been done:

"The frontispiece and the coloured illustration facing page 508 have been specially drawn, and all the other illustrations in colour have been worked on to a considerable extent, and specially coloured for this edition. A few illustrations in the earlier edition have been omitted and in their place have been added those facing page 254 and on pages vi, 25, 37, 316, 320, and 333.

"Many of the pen drawings have been reconsidered and worked on again - those which have been worked on to any great extent being now signed with both dates, 1898 and 1907. Of the rest, reproductions on a larger scale have been made in all but a few cases, and the text has been revised and entirely reset for this edition' (Rackham, Prefatory Note).

Latimore and Haskell, pp. 30-31. Riall, p. 83.