Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Quarto (262 x 186 mm). Specially bound for the publisher in green full morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, gilt lettered and panelled spine, single-line gilt lozenge on sides with gilt corner ornaments from designs by Rackham, top edges gilt, others untrimmed, three-line gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers (the original pictorial endpapers bound in after binder’s blanks). With the publisher’s card slipcase (with hand-numbered label). Colour frontispiece and 11 colour plates mounted on heavy white paper with captioned tissue guards, black and white illustrations in the text, by Rackham. Slight signs of wear at extremities of joints. An excellent copy.
Deluxe edition, number 3 of 460 copies signed by the artist. This is one of ten “special copies” reserved by the publisher from the total edition, presented in a specially commissioned luxury binding decorated in gilt with tools designed by the artist, and including a full-page original pen-and-ink and watercolour drawing by Rackham (signed “Arthur Rackham 1935”), showing a seated elderly man reading a hair-raising story, while his black cat spits at the Devil, who emerges from behind his armchair. It was George Harrap who hit on the idea of a “Rackham special”, the most exclusive format of Rackham’s books. From The Vicar of Wakefield on, Harrap held back the first dozen or so copies to be specially bound, as here, and asked Rackham to add a unique original watercolour sketch to the limited page. The first few copies were usually reserved for the publisher and his family; only a handful were available to the public. Describing his artistic method for these “specials”, Rackham pointed out that “my little sketches must inevitably be of a light hearted or joking nature … They have to be spontaneous and free handed. The nature of the paper is such that there can be no preparatory drawing and no alterations”.
