wdmsy: graveyarddirt:First edition of The Russian Story Book, retold by Richard Wilson, illustrate
wdmsy: graveyarddirt: First edition of The Russian Story Book, retold by Richard Wilson, illustrated by Frank C. Papé and published by Macmillan and Co., Limited, London in 1916. Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. Hardback in dust jacket, red cloth boards with gilt lettering and decorations to front and spine, 16 colour plates including frontispiece with tissue guard (all on coated paper), 34 line drawings (including chapter head and tail pieces plus vignettes), 307 pages. Approximate size 8.5 x 6.7 inches (21.7 x 16.9 cm). Frank Papé (1878-1972) was a British artist associated with the Golden Age of book illustration. His publishing commissions separate quite neatly into two distinct phases: his early work, mainly in colour, showing Art Nouveau and Pre-Raphaelite influences; and his later work, typically in black-and-white, with a more graphic, satirical flavour. The suite of sixteen plates in his Russian Story Book – published just before the Russian Revolution of 1917 – is undoubtedly one of his most splendid works in colour, with jewel-like images perfectly suited to what Richard Wilson describes in his preface as “a barbaric, though not a barbarian, world, full of high colour and spirited action”. Frank C. Pape Note: This is a particularly scarce title – especially so in the original dust jacket. I can locate only one other copy currently for sale worldwide, incomplete and in poor condition Contents include: Ilya and Cloudfall, Ilya Meets Svyatogor and Parts with Him, Ilya and Nightingale the Robber, Ilya and Falcon the Hunter, The Adventure of the Burning White Stone, How Quiet Dunai had Brought the Princess Apraxia to Kiev, The Story of Nikitich and Marina, How the Court of Vladimir Received a Visitor from India the Glorious, The Story of Kasyan and the Dream Maiden, How Stavr the Noble was Saved by a Woman’s Wiles, The Golden Horde, Whirlwind the Whistler, The Kingdoms of Copper, Silver, and Gold, Vasily the Turbulent, Nikita the Footless and the Terrible Tsar and Peerless Beauty the Cake-Baker. With Preface. Condition: Book complete and intact, with no owner inscriptions. Contents very clean, with no staining or finger-marking; book appears unused. A few minor flaws commensurate with age: title page and frontispiece margin with offsetting from tissue guard (tanned), two pairs of leaves attached at upper corner (trimming flaw), one plate with slight foxing to margins, light foxing to reverse of plates plus adjoining text pages, spotting to 13 further pages, 14 pages (including one plate) with slight bumping to upper edge (plus tiny nicks in three cases), one very minor crack between gatherings. Endpapers with a little foxing and offsetting (offsetting also to first and last page); front free endpaper with faint trace of bookseller’s penciled price (erased). Edges of page block with a little spotting; top dusty, with a few small scratches. Binding slightly loose. Boards and spine as shown. Unclipped dust jacket as per scans; reverse with discreet (archival?) tape repair to rear flap fold. Supplied in clean protective sleeve. -- source link