Search Results: Authors starting with R from Whitmore Rare Books

London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910. Seventh Edition. Very Good. Publisher's red cloth binding stamped in gilt. All edges stained. Brown endpapers. Measuring 245 x 180mm and illustrated throughout. Some staining and rubbing to cloth; front signature professionally strengthened. Contemporary gift inscription to front endpaper: "Evelyn Demy. Xmas 1910." Internally pleasing and clean. Laid in is an early photographic image of the author with some notations to the verso. Arthur Rackham was one of the great illustrators of the early 20th century, a period which is referred to as the "golden age" in British book design. His works were produced in both limited and mass market editions as there was a large market for ornately illustrated books before the First World War. Rackham used a unique style, thought to mix European and East Asian influences, that involved both pen and India Ink as well as watercolor. His work was displayed all over Europe - and received awards at International Exhibitions in Milan and… Read More

London: Cassell and Company, Limited, 1906. First Thus. First edition in book form of Little Folks Plays ("Cinderella" previously published as a stand-alone in 1903). Small octavo (7 1/4 x 4 3/4 inches; 185 x 121 mm.). Collating [1-3], 4-48, [1], 4-30, [33], 34-48, [5-9], 10-48. Publisher's blue cloth, front cover pictorially stamped in dark brown and lettered in dark brown and gilt. Spine lettered in dark brown, plain end-papers. Expertly rebacked with the original cloth spine laid-down. Two full-page color plates and two full-page black and white drawings by Arthur Rackham. Four other full-page color plates and several black and white drawings by H.R. Millar and others. An excellent copy. The strange pagination does not account for the apparently intentional stubs left by the publisher, which, when counted, gives continuous numbers. The book, though, is complete in spite of the quirky pagination; it has been compared with the few other known copies as a check for completeness. The publication date… Read More

London: Chatto & Windus, 1909. First edition. First edition in book form; the stories originally appeared in Little Folks in 1905-1906, with the same illustrations. Publisher's red cloth, front cover and spine pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt. Cream pictorial end-papers printed in olive green, top edge gilt. Slight fading to spine, small stain at top of front cover, neat ink inscription (dated 1909) on front end-papers. Collating [2], xvi, 289, [2], [1, blank], with twenty plates including a color frontispiece and seven full- page black & white plates by Arthur Rackham. In addition there are eight black & white drawings in the text by Rackham (for the stories Adventures in Wizard Land and Father Christmas at Home). There are three full-page black & white plates, and four black & white drawings in the text by Hugh Thomson (for the stories The Little Picture Girl and Christmas at the Court of King Jorum). Additional black and white plates and text illustrations by Partridge, Baumer, Rountree,… Read More

London: Westminster Gazette, 1894. First edition. The scarce first issue (July 1894) with "Dolly" as running headline and "price one shilling" at the extreme lower right corner; subsequent issues have "The Dolly Dialogues" as running headline and the price location shifted upward. Yellow pictorial wrappers, blue lettering and illustration. Mild wear and soiling to wrappers, especially on spine. The title-page is signed in black ink "Anthony Hope Hawkins." Small octavo (7 3/16 x 5 9/16 in; 182 x 142 mm). Collating 111, (1, blank). Four black and white illustrated plates in half-tone by Rackham at pp. 32, 42, 82, 104. An excellent copy. Only two copies of the first issue have come to auction within the last thirty-five years: The first had chipping, the second lacked the backstrip. " The stories that make up The Dolly Dialogues were published in the Westminster Gazette from Oct. 1893 to June 1894 and were not illustrated. In July 1894 they were collected and issued as the Westminster Gazette Library -… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1905. First trade edition. Publishers green cloth, pictorially stamped in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine, plain green end-papers, all edges stained green. Title-page very lightly stained on edge from titled tissue guard, spine slightly faded and a little rubbed at extremities. Neat early ink signature on half-title. Quarto (9 7/8 x 7 1/4 inches; 251 x 184 mm). Collating viii, 57, [1 blank], [2]. Color frontispiece and fifty color plates mounted with titled tissue guards. A Very Good copy. Around the middle of 1904 Ernest Brown & Phillips commissioned 50 color illustrations to Rip Van Winkle, and purchased the originals and all rights for 300 guineas. The publishing rights were then resold in a complicated deal to Heinemann, before the illustrations were exhibited at Brown and Phillips' Leicester Galleries. Most of the Rip drawings were sold at the exhibition, and by October they had all found purchasers. "It was the first work that greatly advanced… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1913. First edition. Collating 43, [1]. Publisher's gray-green cloth, front cover and spine pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt, top edge stained gray. Very slight discoloration on free end-papers from paste-downs. Ink name partially erased from the bookplate design on front paste-down, otherwise a very Fine copy in the original brown paper dust jacket printed in black. A few small and neat repairs to extremities of dust jacket. Forty-four color plates (including frontispiece) mounted on tan paper, with descriptive tissue guards, and ten drawings in black and white. "Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures brings together a number of drawings unrelated in theme. Most of them, it is true, are drawings of the supernatural, of goblins, elves and fairies, and many are based on actual fairy tales; but there are also delightful straightforward drawings of children at the seaside or in the Broad Walk, Kensington Gardens; there is also the well-known 'Cupid's Alley' [the original… Read More

London: Constable & Co, 1919. First edition. Number 473 of 575 copies signed by the illustrator. Publisher's half vellum over boards, with gilt to spine and covers. A VG+ copy with splitting along front joint near crown and chipping to spine ends; shelfwear to board edges and dampstaining and mottling to boards. Textblock edges a bit toned and brittle, with interior remaining bright. "Few of Mr Rackham's work have been more consistently impressed with charm and beauty than his illustrations in colour to Some British Ballads. In them he pictures a succession of fascinating heroines habited in quaint and picturesque costumes, amid surroundings which, though belonging to no definite place or period, are always appropriate and congruous. His heroes are hardly less charming than his heroines, and the scenes in which they are represented constitute a series of fascinating and delightful pictures ... one must feel grateful to Mr Rackham for giving us the prettiest picture book of the season" (The… Read More

London: Chatto & Windus, 1925. First English trade edition (no English limited edition was issued). Quarto (10 x 7 1/4 inches; 253 x 186 mm.). Collating 175, [1]. Original orange cloth pictorially stamped and lettered in red on front cover and lettered in red on spine. Blank endpapers. Seven mounted color plates and twenty-four drawings in black and white. A Very Good copy in the scarce original color pictorial dust jacket (jacket complete but with some repairs). The text, with the same plates and drawings, first appeared in magazine form in Good Housekeeping, beginning in May 1925. "The Velveteen Rabbit (1922), [Margery Williams Bianco's ] first children's book, was illustrated by William Nicholson. It was followed by another book about a toy, The Little Wooden Doll (1925), for which the illustrator was her own daughter Pamela...Margery Williams Bianco's third children's book, the much admired Poor Cecco (1925), is the story of a wooden toy, a ‘loose-jointed thing like a dog', who gets out of… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1913. First trade edition. First trade edition, later issue (with blank endpapers and no date on verso of title-page). Octavo (7 15/16 x 5 13/16 inches; 202 x 149 mm). Collating xi, [1, blank], 159, [1]. Dust jacket chipped at top and bottom of front panel and top of spine with some loss of lettering, and some old tape stains on verso. Publisher's original gray cloth, with a 'sampler' pictorially stamped in red, blue, and green with blue lettering, spine pictorially decorated and lettered in red, blue and green, top edge blue. Thirteen color plates, eighty-five black and white illustrations, many in silhouette. Title page with blue lettering and black illustration. A bright, Fine copy with just one tiny little 'nick' at the top of the spine. Complete with the original color pictorial dust jacket, correctly priced 6/- net and advertising three other 1913 Heinemann publications on back. "So far as titles go (but not so far as artwork goes) we move into a different key with… Read More

London. Fine/Near Fine. Limited to 410 copies signed by the illustrator, of which this is 331. Fine book bound in original vellum with gilt to spine and front board. Pictorial endpapers. Housed in a Near Fine slipcase with original paper label to top panel and retaining the original glassine jacket in exceptionally nice condition with trivial nicking to top edges. Among Christina Rossetti's most influential works, here combined with the dark and seductive illustrations of Rackham. "Set in a fairy world and exploring themes of temptation, sacrifice, and salvation, Goblin Market tells the story of a fraught encounter between two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, and evil goblin merchants. While Laura exchanges a lock of her golden hair for the chance to taste the goblins' enchanted 'fruit forbidden'...and the goblins violently attack Lizzie, smearing their fruits 'against her mouth' in an attempt to force her to eat" (BL). Ultimately, it is the sisters' reliance and trust on each other that restores them to… Read More

New York: E. P. Dutton, 1909. First US trade edition. Near Fine. An excellent copy of the first US trade edition. Original rust colored cloth elaborately stamped in gilt on the front board and spine. Top-edge stained brown. Illustrated with 12 full page color plates, 2 full page black and white illustrations and 7 chapter headings and tail-pieces by Arthur Rackham. "Gulliver's Travels has given Swift an immortality beyond temporary fame...All those who had been fascinated by the realism and vivid detail of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe were captivated again, even though they knew that Gulliver must be fiction. The brilliance and thoroughness with which his logic and invention work out the piquancies of scale involved by the giant human among the Lilliputians, and then by a minikin Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians, ran away with the author's original intention. Gulliver's Travels has achieved the final apotheosis of a satirical fable, but it has also become a tale for children. For every edition… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1905. First edition. Collating viii, 57, [1 blank], [2]. Publishers green cloth, pictorially stamped in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine, plain green endpapers, all edges stained green. Color frontispiece and fifty color plates mounted with lettered tissue guards. Preliminary text leaves foxed, otherwise an excellent copy. "The 51 illustrations, for a story of not more than five thousand words, enables the story to be told twice, once through Irving's words, and once again, image by image, through Rackham's pictures... In his illustrations, Rackham pays homage not only to Dürer, Cruikshank and Dutch seventeenth-century painting, but to contemporary artists, too" (Hamilton). "But the first work that greatly advanced his fame in the years immediately following his marriage was his edition of Rip Van Winkle... This lovely book decisively established Rackham as the leading decorative illustrator of the Edwardian period" (Hudson). Latimore and Haskell 26.… Read More

London: Service & Paton, 1897. First Rackham illustrated edition. Octavo (7 5/8 x 5 inches; 194 x 128 mm.). Collating [ii], [x], 628, [2, advertisements]. Publisher's burgundy ribbed cloth. Upper board with gilt stamped title and author vignette, spine with foliate design and title lettered in gilt. Upper edge cut, others untrimmed. E5 & E6 (pp. 73-76) poorly opened with very slight loss (1/8 x 1 inch); 2D6 (p. 427/8) with small piece (7/16 x 1/2 inch) missing from blank outer margin Title-page printed in red and black. Sixteen full-page black and white illustrations, including frontispiece. Engraved bookplate of W. Kinning Crone on rear paste-down. A few very minor and insignificant marginal stains, otherwise a Near Fine copy. "By 1898, Rackham had become the master of a repertoire of three areas of style. The first, and perhaps the style which had brought him the greater part of his income to date, was the blood-and-thunder boy's adventure story manner of... books such as The Money-Spinner and… Read More

New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1928. First Thus. First edition illustrated by Rackham, published only in America. Octavo (8 5/16 x6 1/8 in; 212 x 155 mm). Collating [8]. 80, [1], [3, blank]. Original tan cloth, pictorially stamped in colors. Small "1951" postage stamp on front free-endpaper. Title page, frontispiece and two full page illustrations in rose and greenish-blue, twenty-six black and white drawings. A Near Fine copy. "There is no more famous illustrator of children's books in the entire world than Arthur Rackham. Indeed, there are many people who make a point of buying every Rackham book regardless of subject, merely for the sake of the pictures. For, unlike that of many illustrators, Mr. Rackham's work appeals equally to the child and the adult, delighting the young reader by its whimsical humor and multitude of perfectly executed details, and adults by its beauty and artistry. In 'The Lonesomest Doll' Mr. Rackham has found an unusually appealing theme, and he has contributed a series of… Read More

London: William Heinemann, 1912. First edition. Number 401 of 1,450 copies signed by the illustrator. Original publisher's cloth binding with gilt to spine and front board. Top edge gilt, remaining edges deckled. With a bit of toning to spine and wear to corners. Rear hinge repaired. Internally with some foxing and offsetting to preliminary and terminal pages; long snag to rear pastedown. A pleasing example overall. The 1st century AD philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, is recorded as having said about Aesop: "like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events"… Read More

Paris: L'Edition D'Art H. Piazza, 1920. Limited to 300 copies with an extra-suite of (13 of 14) mounted color plates, this being copy no. 256 of a total edition of 1300. Quarto (11 7/8 x 9 1/8; 303 x 232 mm). Collating 108, [2]. Publisher's original pictorial tan wrappers. Fourteen mounted color plates with captioned tissue guards. Headpieces, typographical devices. The duplicate color plate "La France" is missing from the additional suite. Otherwise a Near Fine copy. First edition in French of the Rackham-illustrated Some British Ballads (1919) including additional black and white vignettes. Paul Fort translated the original ballads and there are some included that are not found in the English edition. Latimore and Haskell 50-51. Riall 137.

London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd, 1928. First trade edition. Quarto (9 13/16 x 7 1/2 inches; 250 x 191 mm.). Collating 102, [1], [1, blank]. Publisher's green cloth pictorially stamped in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine. Top edge gilt, others uncut. Pictorial endpapers. Eight color plates and thirty drawings in black and white. A Near Fine copy in a VG+ original color pictorial dust jacket with just some chipping and loss to the spine extremities and edges. By 1928, the traditional Rackham book - freely and lavishly illustrated, and lushly produced - was, culturally no longer in fashion nor financially feasible. Artistically, Rackham's work was being overshadowed by a younger generation. Publisher George Harrap stepped in, took up the challenge, and, through production economies, published a new kind of Rackham book. But if the volumes were not as spectacular as in the past, the artwork was no less impressive. Latimore and Haskell 63-64. Riall 164-165.

London/New York: J.M. Dent & Sons Limited/E.P. Dutton & Company, 1914. Second edition. Publisher's original blue cloth pictorially and ornamentally stamped in gilt, gilt lettered and ornamented spine with "Dent London" at foot. Onlaid color plate to upper board and blue cloth label with "With Many Coloured Illustrations" pasted over small rectangular panel. Original pictorial dust jacket (with "J.M. Dent & Sons" at foot printed in green at foot). Neat gift signature to front paste-down. With all the plates in color, in an unrecorded binding variant. Octavo (7 x 5 in; 178 x 127 mm). 128 pages. Eight color plates, including frontispiece (all dated 1899). A Fine copy in the very scarce dust jacket (jacket slightly chipped at top and bottom of spine). Both Latimore & Haskell and Riall note binding in red or green cloth but not blue, as here. The half-title reads: Tales for Children from Many Lands Edited by F.C. Tilney. "I have seen a copy that causes a confusion as to which is the 1st edition. The… Read More

New York: Duffield & Company, 1914. First edition. Quarto (9 1/2 x 7 5/16 inches; x 242 x 185 mm.). Collating [12], 178, [1], [1, blank]. Publisher's light blue cloth pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine. Pictorial endpapers in pale blue and white by Lauren Ford. Two color plates by Arthur Rackham (including frontispiece) and numerous black and white drawings in the text by Lauren Ford. Housed in a fleece-lined quarter green morocco clamshell case. Rear inner hinge slightly cracked, otherwise a Near Fine copy. A young, motherless boy, a dreamer who secretly loves poetry, yearns to be held and loved by the beautiful woman he has conjured in his mind in the dim moonlight - Imagina - and communes with trees, birds, flowers, and his dog, Kit, all of whom understand and accept him as he is rather than how his no-nonsense guardian would prefer him to be. Riall 123. See Latimore and Haskell 42.

London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1903. First thus. First Rackham-illustrated edition, first issue printed on pink paper. Collating 205, [1, blank], [2, adv.]. Publisher's original blue cloth, front cover and spine blind-stamped in a conventional all-over patternand lettered in gilt. A color variant not noted by Riall or Latimore and Haskell. Title-page printed in red and black on white paper as issued. Eight full page color plates by Arthur Rackham. A Near Fine copy with just the lightest amount of rubbing to extremities and a few leaves with light creases at upper corners. Lady Greene was a prolific Irish children's author whose works emphasized moral life lessons. The present work was originally published in 1870 with the subtitle Buy the Truth and Sell It Not: A Tale for the Young; and it tells the simple and uplifting story of two boys who learn the Christian way toward generosity and goodness. Illustrated for the first time by Arthur Rackham, the present version of the story is brought to life… Read More