Peer Gynt by Ibsen, Henrik (1828-1906) - 1936

London: George G. Harrap & Co, 1936. First Edition, First Printing. Very Good in a Very Good Dust Jacket. Very Good/Very Good. Illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

First (British) Printing of this Edition. Illustrated with 12 coloured plates with titled tissue-guards and 38-line drawings by Arthur Rackham.

Publisher's gilt-pictorial burnt-orange cloth covered boards with stamped gilt titles and emblem on front with gilt spine titles; brown and white illustrated endpapers; Bindings square and firm. Text clean and bright. Light shelf wear a touch of rub corners and lower spine tip. Scarce pictorial dust jacket, price-clipped, minor edgewear, slightly shorter than volume. Protected in Mylar sleeve. 10 inches tall. 256 pages.. From the translation of R. Farquharson Sharp; his translation is an improvement over former ones because he refused the temptation of retaining the rhymed verse of the original.

He has instead chosen unrhymed verse in Ibsen's original meter in an attempt to capture the literal meaning.

Background Information:
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1867. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays.

The title character, based on a legendary Norwegian folk hero, is a rogue who will be destroyed unless he is saved by the love of a woman.

Arthur Rackham is widely regarded as one of the leading illustrators from the 'Golden Age' of British book illustration which encompassed the years from 1900 until the start of the First World War. During that period, there was a strong market for high quality illustrated books that typically were given as Christmas gifts.

REF: Briggs 74; Clute