THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES

Publisher's blue cloth with pictorial illustration and titling in gilt, smooth spine with gilt lettering, original light blue printed dust jacket. In the original (somewhat scratched, soiled, and extensively repaired) cardboard box with illustrated gold paper label on the top and a printed label on one side. WITH 16 TIPPED-IN COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAY NIELSEN, pictorial title page, and several black & white headpieces, vignettes, and other decorative touches. ◆Hinge open before two of the plates, but QUITE A FINE COPY, internally clean and bright throughout, the binding pristine, and the jacket about as close to faultless as one could hope for.

The beautifully composed, finely colored, and entirely pleasing plates by Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen (1886-1957) are the stars in this collection of six fairy tales, finely retold by an esteemed folklorist and Cambridge don. Previously published (with one additional tale) under the title "In Powder and Crinoline" (1913), this work marries Nielsen's strong linearity to delicate coloring in designs featuring "highly stylized" people and objects. "Foxglove blossoms hang in measured asymmetry; princes and princesses stand on improbably long legs; and their garments billow in gravity-defying parabolas. The power of [Nielsen's] illustrations lies in his uncanny ability to retrieve a story's emotional effect on its reader and to recreate it visually in two dimensions." (Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales) An English writer and critic of Cornish descent who published under the pseudonym "Q," Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) is perhaps best remembered as the compiler of the monumental "Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900." Ours is an especially fine copy of the present work, made all the more appealing by the presence of the original box, which has done a wonderful job of keeping our volume in such a remarkable state of preservation..