Rip Van Winkle with Drawings by Arthur Rackham

London - New York: William Heinemann - Doubleday, Page & Co., 1907. Stated Third Impression, February 1907. Large 7 3/4" x 10" design. Olive full cloth boards, gilt cover design and spine titles, moderate shelf wear, spine sunning. Cover depicts Rackham design in gilt of the aged Rip with walking stick. This particular volume adds a Postscript on the lore of the Catskills. Thick heavy stock leaves of text, very good; moderate roll. Dark green page edges at all sides. Thick heavy stock green matte endpapers. Bind good; hinges intact. Includes fifty-one color plates with captioned tissue guards from the inimitable Arthur Rackham and sixty-two pages of text. This unique volume features the extravagent plates mounted on green matte leaves following Irving's story. Also, decorative headers, tailpieces, etc. throughout. Near very good example of fine book craftstmanship. Printed by Ballantyne & Co., Limited, Tavistock St. London. Insured post. Set in Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving's slumbersome tale is an American masterpiece of short prose, based on local history but rooted in European myth and legend. Wandering through the mountains to escape from his nagging wife, Rip Van Winkle encounters a stranger and a group of small oddly dressed people playing a strange game with bowls of a magical beverage. An enduring foundation of Catskill lore, the captivating narrative continues the fanciful adventures of an amiable ne'er-do-well colonial farmer who wanders into the highlands, falls asleep after drinking with a band of strange little mountain men, and awakes twenty years later in a world that has passed him by. Effusing a gentle humor, Rackham's art is a constant reminder of a more innocent era. This edition—sure to enchant art lovers—will also delight Rackham devotees and fantasy fans alike. This edition features all fifty-one full-page color plates, as well as the full text of Irving's classic. The multitude of "illustrations, for a story of not more than five-thousand words, enables the story to be told twice, once through Irving's words, and once again, image by image, through Rackham's pictures. In his illustrations, Rackham pays homage not only to Dürer, Cruikshank and Dutch seventeenth-century painting, but to contemporary artists, too." (Hamilton)." This is the work that greatly advanced Arthur Rackham's fame and decisively established him as the leading decorative illustrator of the Edwardian period. These magnificent illustrations, created for this edition of Washington Irving's enchanting fairy tale, established Rackham. The illustrations feature traits that soon were to characterize much of Rackham's art: flowing pen lines and muted watercolors, forests of looming trees, lovely fairy maidens, and quizzical troll-like figures. Today these images are recognized as among his very best.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good. Illus. by Rackham, Arthur. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.