Mother Goose: The Old Nursery Rhymes.

RACKHAM, Arthur.

$1,150.00

Item Number: 135055

London: William Heinemann, n.d. [1913].

First edition of Arthur Rackham’s illustrated rendition of the classic nursery rhyme collection. Octavo, bound in full polished calf Zaehnsdorf with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, gilt vignette to the front panel, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham with 13 full-page color plates with captioned tissue guards and numerous in-text illustrations. Original cloth and pictorial endpapers bound in at rear. In very good condition.

"So far as titles go (but not so far as artwork goes) we move into a different key with Mother Goose, a book constructed in 1913 from a series of plates and line drawings which had appeared and would reappear in St Nicholas between 1912 and 1914. The poems were chosen by Rackham, presumably in terms of the themes and subjects he wished to illustrate: this would account for the consistently good quality of the many plates and of the numerous line drawings." (Gettings 131).