Where the Blue Begins.

MORLEY, Christopher. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

$75.00

Item Number: 137414

London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1922.

First edition of Morley’s classic canine story, wonderfully illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Quarto, original publisher’s cloth, top edge gilt, pictorial endpapers, illustrated with four color plates and numerous line drawings by Arthur Rackham. In very good condition with light rubbing to the crown and foot of the spine. A nice example.

"Morley admirably creates a canine world through names alone. There are Mike Terrier, the curate Mr. J. Rover Poodle, the upper-class and working-class neighbors Mrs. Airedale and Mrs. Collie, the nursemaid Mrs. Spaniel and little Shaggy, her puppy, Gissing's adopted puppies Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers, haughty Mr. and Mrs. Chow and their "intolerably spotless" little Sandy, the landlady Mrs. Purps, the salesclerk Miss Whippet, the matronly Mrs. Mastiff, the compulsive shopper Mrs. Dachshund, the parishioners Mr. Dobermann-Pinscher, Mrs. Griffon, and Mrs. Retriever. There are the place names like Dalmatian Heights and the little shrine of St. Spitz. These are intermixed with humanless real locales like Paris and Atlantic City, Murray Hill and Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Wall Street, Delmonico s Restaurant and Trinity Church, and real historical personages like the Grimm brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, and Masefield; to make this our real world only inhabited by dogs, rather than some imaginary planet of dogs" (Fred Patten).