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First Edition. Limited Edition, number 415 of 500 paper copies. Limp vellum over card wraps with yapp edge, 4to, with original green silk ties, and printed upon handmade Riccardi paper (another 12 were printed upon vellum.) Titles are printed in gold to the upper right cover and upon the spine. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. With tipped in frontispiece color collotype plate and red-printed tissue guard of Wm. Russell Flint's watercolor "He took Danäe and her babe down to the seashore, and put them into a great chest and thrust them out to sea." An additional 11 full-page color illustrations are similarly presented, for 12 in all. Title page is printed in blue and black inks, with a vignette woodcut image of Jason and the centaur Cheiron. Pp. xviii plus 116 pp. CONDITION : Fine. Lacking dust jacket and publisher's slipcase, but provided with a velcro-closed mylar chemise. ** These Greek fairy tales were adapted by English Author and Anglican priest CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875), and are told in a definitely gentle and noncontroversial manner meant to awaken the interest in the study of the classics among the younger reader. The first story of the Perseus section, for instance is much less explicit than the written detail given in, for instance, "Danaë, A Poem, "as told by T. Sturge Moore in the Vale Press edition of that name (See our No. 9730.) There are other differences as well in some of the textual details, but overall, this treatment, with its colorful plates of the work of Scottish artist, painter, engraver and designer Sir WILLIAM RUSSELL FLINT (1880-1969) makes for an immersive experience of wonder which matches the otherworldly glamor of the Greek Gods. Flint, born and educated in Edinburgh at Stuart 's Melville College, later studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London. His work as a commercial illustrator included pieces in the Illustrated London News, posters, and a number of books, including a famous version of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (1910). He became President of the Royal Society of Watercolorists in later life, and was knighted in 1947.**British AUTHOR multi-talented novelist, social reformer and broad church Anglican priest, Charles Kingsley, mined his boyhood interests in geology and Darwinian scientific thought in the natural history details of this work. He also was influential in the Christian Socialist Movement, taught modern history at Cambridge, and became chaplain to Queen Victoria, among other accomplishments.**The RICCARDI PRESS was established by the Century Guild Hobby Horse co-founder, HERBERT HORNE (1864-1916). Riccardi produced a small number of fine press editions for the Medici Society between 1909 and 1923. These books employed the Horne-designed Riccardi typeface (14 pt.) and a special color collotype process for the richly detailed color plates referred to as the "Medici Process." Numerous gelatine coated plates were employed to approximate the high quality fine art detail and rich hues of the original works, printed upon heavy art paper separately and then tipped into the printed books. REFS: R. Steele, The Revival of Printing: a Bibliographical Catalogue..(London: Macmillan & Co, Ltd., and Phillip Lee Warner, publisher to The Medici Society Ltd., 1912) p. 85-86. W. Ransom (1929), Riccardi Press checklist No. 5, (First Series) p. 395. (AMJ)
Ref: ILLUS 9738
$1150.00