Skip to content

No image available

A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys

No image available

A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

  • Used
  • Hardcover
Condition
Excellent
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Redding, Connecticut, United States
Item Price
A$2,051.41
Or just A$2,020.33 with a
Bibliophiles Club Membership
A$5.44 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 7 to 14 days

More Shipping Options

Payment Methods Accepted

  • Visa
  • Mastercard
  • American Express
  • Discover
  • PayPal

About This Item

Boson: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1893. Edition de Luxe. Limited to 250 copies this being copy No. 88. With sixty designs by Walter Crane including 19 magnificent full page colour plates. Bound in the original full, embossed vellum lettered in gold, t.e.g.. Hawthorne adapted these fanciful tales for children from classical mythology. Contained within are such memorable stories as The Gorgon's Head, The Chimaera and The Golden Touch, which proved to be quite popular. Binding shows some light soiling otherwise a very lovely copy of Hawthorne's great classic.. Limited Edition. Original Vellum Gilt. Excellent. Illus. by Walter Crane. 8vo..

Synopsis

Hawthorne made it his ambition to be a writer as a teenager, he graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, where poet Longfellow was also a student, and spent several years traveling New England writing short stories before creating The Scarlet Letter. He wrote A Wonder-Book between April and July 1851, freely adapting six legends from Charles Anton's A Classical Dictionary . He set out deliberately to 'modernize' the stories, freeing them from 'cold moonshine' and using a romantic, readable style. This was criticized by adults but proved universally popular with children.  The stories in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys are all stories within a story. The frame being that a Williams College student, Eustace Bright, is telling these tales to a group of children at Tanglewood, an area in Lenox, Massachusetts, where Hawthorne lived for a time. A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys covers the myths of: The Gorgon's Head - the story of Perseus killing Medusa at the request of the king of the island, Polydectes. The Golden Touch - the story of King Midas and his "Golden Touch". The Paradise of Children - the story of Pandora opening the box filled with all of mankind's Troubles. The Three Golden Apples - the story of Heracles procuring the Three Golden Apples from the Hesperides' orchard, with the help of Atlas. The Miraculous Pitcher - the story of Baucis and Philemon providing food and shelter to two strangers who were Zeus and "Quicksilver" (Hermes) in disguise. Baucis and Philemon were rewarded by the gods for their kindness; they were promised never to live apart from one another. The Chimæra - the story of Bellerophon taming Pegasus and killing the Chimæra.

Read More: Identifying first editions of A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys

Reviews

(Log in or Create an Account first!)

You’re rating the book as a work, not the seller or the specific copy you purchased!

Details

Bookseller
Quaker Hill Books US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
884556
Title
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
Author
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Illustrator
Walter Crane
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Excellent
Edition
Limited Edition
Publisher
Houghton Mifflin & Co.
Place of Publication
Boson
Date Published
1893

Terms of Sale

Quaker Hill Books

30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives not as described or damaged.

About the Seller

Quaker Hill Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2009
Redding, Connecticut

About Quaker Hill Books

By appointment only.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Vellum
Vellum is a sheet of specialty prepared skin of lamb, calf, or goat kid used for binding a book or for printing and writing. ...
Gilt
The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...

This Book’s Categories

tracking-