Peer Gynt

London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1936. In the Troll scenes, or in Peer's moorland Encounter with the Threadballs, Rackhamerie abounds"

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. IBSEN, Henrik. Peer Gynt. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1936. Limited to 460 numbered copies (this copy being No. 286), signed by Arthur Rackham.

Quarto. Twelve color plates with captioned tissue guards and numerous black and white text drawings as head- and tailpieces, and devices.

Publisher's vellum boards gilt lettered and ornamented, with gilt vignette. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. A very fine copy, partially uncut. Housed in the original publishers cardboard slipcase with matching limitation number.

"In the troll scenes, or in Peer's moorland encounter with the threadballs, Rackhamerie abounds...".
(Gettings, Arthur Rackham. P. 165).

Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Written in Danish - the common written language of Denmark and Norway in Ibsen's lifetime - it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed Per Gynt, the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modeled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845. Gettings, p. 181. Hudson, p. 182. Riall, p. 192.