The Thirteenth Annual Issue of The Saturday Book.: Founded by Leonard Russell. Edited by John Hadfield with decorations by Faith Jaques

London:: The Macmillan Company,, 1953.. First printing. Near Fine. Near Fine in a Near Fine price clipped DJ. Edge wear. Octavo (6 x 9 Inches). Green cloth, gilt lettering and rules set in red to front board and spine. Mythological beasts illustrated endpapers. [1-7] 320 pp. Color frontispiece, illustrated with color plates, wood engravings, drawings and photographs. This Saturday Book includes a cabinet of curiosities as 'A Census of Sea Serpents' by Anna McMullen and 'an unnatural history of Dragons' by Miles Hadfield, an animal fantasy; the Taxidermist of Bramber, wood engravings by Derek Pooley and R.L. Bickerton as well as a study of vintage cars by L.T.C. Rolt, Peter Quennell's Hogarth's 'Marriage-a-la-mode' and Bill Brandt's Cezanne Country. Founded in 1941 by Leonard Russell, The Saturday Book was a highly illustrated annual anthology of literary, historic, cultural and collector's writings published at Christmas time from 1941 to 1975. Russell served as editor for a decade, and was succeeded by John Hadfield. At the 1951 Modern Books and Writers Exhibition of 100 books selected to illustrate the renaissance of book design in Great Britain, Sir Francis Maynell and Mr. Desmond Flower chose The Saturday Book-with its fine medley of articles on social life- as 'the one book to represent the full versatility and fanciful possibilities of printing today'. In addition, The Saturday Books were often illustrated with a fine selection of ephemera; as noted by Maurice Rickards in his excellent Encyclopedia of Ephemera. Cloth