Some British Ballads
- London: Constable & Co, 1919
London: Constable & Co, 1919. First edition. Later issue. Publisher's blue cloth, gilt lettered, top edge blue, gray pictorial endpapers. The mildest of wear to spine foot, otherwise a fine copy in very good possibly later dust jacket (with Heinemann imprint at foot of spine and with the last book listed on the rear panel as Some British Ballads). Quarto (10 x 7 3/8 in; 257 x 187 mm). Collating 170, [2]. Sixteen full color plates mounted on gray paper with tissue guards, twenty-four black and white drawings. Loosely inserted between two of the preliminary leaves is the original Constable & Co., request card which has left a small rectangular mark on the two facing pages.
The delightful copy contains a collection of historic British poems, with sixteen charming medievalizing illustrations by Rackham. "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 Connoisseur).
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children’s books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic—from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.
The delightful copy contains a collection of historic British poems, with sixteen charming medievalizing illustrations by Rackham. "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 Connoisseur).
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children’s books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic—from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.