Kate Greenaway

London: Adam and Charles Black, 1905. Edition De Luxe
With an Exceptional Original Pencil Sketch by Kate Greenaway

[GREENAWAY, Kate]. SPIELMANN, M.H., and G.S. LAYARD. Kate Greenaway. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1905.

Edition de Luxe. Limited to 500 numbered copies (this copy being No. 181), signed by the artist's brother, John Greenaway. Large quarto (10 1/2 x 8 1/8 inches; 267 x 206 mm.). xix, [1], 300, [1], [3, blank] pp. Color frontispiece and fifty-three color plates after Kate Greenaway, with descriptive tissue guards, and numerous black and white illustrations, including thirty-four half-tone plates.

Publisher's white cloth over beveled boards, front cover and spine lettered in gilt and decoratively stamped in blind in a geometric and floral design. Top edge gilt. Color pictorial endpapers. A near fine copy.

All 500 copies of the Edition de Luxe have original Kate Greenaway artwork bound in. Copy No. 1 has five watercolor sketches, copy No. 2 has four, copy No. 3 has three, copy No. 4 has two, and copy Nos. 5-10 each have one watercolor sketch. Beginning with copy No. 11, each copy has an original pencil sketch.

This example has an exceptional original pencil sketch by Kate Greenaway depicting a young girl, standing facing left, wearing a long dress with an empire waist, big puffy sleeves, and a wide sash with a bow at the back. At upper right, are detailed sketches of her arms, wearing long fingerless gloves, resting on a surface.

"Containing upwards of 80 full page illustrations, 53 of which are reproduced in facsimile from original water-colour drawings by Kate Greenaway. There are also numerous thumb nail sketches with pen and pencil throughout the text, many of them from letters to Ruskin. Few of the illustrations have ever been published before. The Edition de Luxe is limited to 500 copies...each copy being signed by Mr. John Greenaway and numbered. It contains the earliest impressions of the illustrations, and the letterpress is printed on hand-made paper. Bound in white vellum cloth, gilt top...Each of these copies contains an original pencil sketch by Kate Greenaway...Fifteen Extra Copies. Each of these copies contains at least one original water-color sketch by Kate Greenaway" (Publisher's Prospectus).

Kate Greenaway (1846-1901). The English illustrator Kate Greenaway dramatically changed the art of the picture book. For many modern critics, her work represents the essence of a Victorian childhood. For over a hundred and forty years, Kate Greenaway's works have been honored as representing the essence of illustrations for children. Her relatively simple line drawings and colored pictures of young boys and girls at play influenced generations of writers and illustrators for children. Her romantic conception of childhood was based in part on her own experiences. She was born in Hoxton, a community in what is now Greater London, England. "I had such a very happy time when I was a child," Greenaway is reported as saying in M. H. Spielmann and G. S. Lanyard's 1905 biography Kate Greenaway, "and, curiously, was so very much happier then than my brother and sister, with exactly the same surroundings. I suppose my imaginary life made me one long continuous joy-filled everything with a strange wonder and beauty. Living in that childish wonder is a most beautiful feeling - I can so well remember it. There was always something more-behind and beyond everything-to me. The golden spectacles were very very big."

Schuster & Engen 226. Thomson 400.