Little Ann and Other Poems.

TAYLOR, Jane and Ann. Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. [Louisa May Alcott].

$7,500.00

Item Number: 142318

London: George Routledge & Sons, [1882].

First edition, first state of this children’s classic. First state with the half green cloth binding, all edges stained blue and bright yellow endpapers. Schuster & Engen 109a. Octavo, original half green cloth over pictorial boards, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, printed in colours by Edmund Evans. Association copy, inscribed by Louisa May Alcott on the front free endpaper, “Aubrey, from his friend L. M. Alcott Aug. 1884.” Louisa May Alcott remains best known for her beloved children’s classic, Little Women, published in 1868. One of the most popular juvenile books ever published, “Little Women is an outstanding achievement of 19th-century American literature, and the first children’s novel written in that country to have become an enduring classic.” “It is one of the first fictional texts for children to convey the difficulties and anxieties of girlhood, and… suggests that becoming a ‘little woman’ is a learned and often fraught process, not an instinctual or natural condition of female development” (Foster & Simon, 87). In good condition. Loss to the lower right portion of the front board. Bookplate. A very nice association linking the quintessential Art Nouveau illustrator of juvenile fiction with the author of one of the most popular juvenile books ever published.

English Victorian artist and author Catherine Greenaway began her career designing greeting cards for the burgeoning holiday card market in the mid 19th century after receiving her degree in graphic design from the Slade School of Fine Art. Greenaway began collaborating with wood-block engraver Edmund Evans with her first popular children's book, Under the Window, which appeared in 1879. Within a few years of the best-selling work's publication, Greenaway's depictions of children in imaginary 18th-century costumes in a Queen Anne style were being imitated in England, Germany and the United States.