Rip Van Winkle

First French edition of the 50 colour plates by Arthur Rackham, tipped in with captioned tissue guards, a black vignette on the title page, and a further black vignette hors texte by Arthur Rackham, one of 200 copies on Whatman paper.
Publisher’s full vellum, smooth spine gilt-lettered, upper cover gilt-stamped with the title and a gilt illustration of Rip Van Winkle, illustrated endpapers, top edge gilt, uncut, original silk ties preserved. Occasional light foxing.

A splendid copy, remarkably fresh, of Washington Irving’s fantastical tale profusely illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

"Let us single out in particular Arthur Rackham’s Rip Van Winkle. One might have thought that nothing more could be said of Washington Irving’s amiable legend, long since fallen into the public domain of image and operetta; yet Mr. Arthur Rackham has, it seems to me, restored to it an artistic virginity. He has delightfully transposed it into a series of little tableaux, innocent or fantastic, with a freshness and subtle blending of colour, and with a marvellous ingenuity that might be thought the result of a collaboration between a chastened Rops and a mischievous Greenaway. Some of these vignettes—or rather miniatures with ivory and vellum backgrounds—evoke the whole of old America: its settlers, Methodists, wise and comely housewives; others, peopled with spectres and gnomes, are comic yet terrifying Lilliputian nightmares; and, occupying a good half of the volume, mounted on green felt paper that sets it off to full advantage, Mr. Arthur Rackham’s work brings a true renewal to the art of illustration" (Marcel Ballot, Le Figaro, 1 January 1907).

Provenance: manuscript ex-libris on the half-title of Maurice Feuillet, celebrated press illustrator, notably for major court cases, as well as art critic and founder of the Figaro artistique. Feuillet is remembered for his courtroom sketches during the trials of Émile Zola in 1898 and Alfred Dreyfus in 1899.