IN FAIRYLAND:
London: Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer, 1870.
First edition. Folio. [5 leaves], 31 leaves printed and numbered on versos only. Illustrated with 16 full-page color plates containing 36 designs by Doyle, engraved and printed in color by Edmund Evans. Bound by Edmonds & Remnants in publisher'sgreen cloth with titles and vignettes in gilt on the upper cover with a double gilt rules frame, the spine with leaves and trailing vines and fourteen fairy-land characters in gilt, a.e.g. Trifling rub to corners, some cracking to inner hinge paper, but a bright and fine copy of this landmark book. Item #24040
From the collection of Robin de Beaumont with his bookplate.
See illustration in Peppin. Fantasy, The Golden Age of Fantastic Illustration, p. 65.
"Perhaps the single most popular and influential series of fairy illustrations ever produced." (Johnson. Fantastic Illustration and Design in Britain, 1850-1930, p. 63).
"Looking within himself, Doyle found a fantastic, but consistently imagined world in which fairies and elves live in the open air among birds, butterflies, snails, and beetles as large as themselves. If his elves and fairies also like to congregate, their convivalities, unlike those of his massed human beings, are never oppressive. Edmund Evans's fine wood engravings for this volume are the largest that he made during his long career as a color printer." (Gordon Ray. English. No. 146.)
"It is generally felt that Richard Doyle rose to his greatest heights with the graceful clusters of humanized and sentimentalized but endearing little elves he created for In Fairy-land. In the case of this book the pictures preceded the text, a situation not uncommon in the history of illustrated children's books." (Gottlieb. Early Children's Book and Their Illustration. No. 168).
Engen, Rodney, Richard Doyle. 1983. pp. 155-159.
Price: $6,500.00