Books

First edition, deluxe issue, one of only 250 copies, signed by Arthur Rackham. This copy is one of the unnumbered copies reserved for presentation. Large 4to. Full publisher's ivory vellum with gilt lettering and vignettes. Top edge gilt and others untrimmed. A near fine copy, bright and clean, slight dustiness to endpapers and silk ties lacking. Mounted colour frontis and fifty mounted colour plates at the end on brown art paper (one mount with a paper fault resulting in a small hole) and protected by captioned tissue guards. This book was the first of the opulent Christmas Gift books, and Rackham's first major work. Its beauty and popularity began the "Golden Age of Book Illustration," in which publishers and illustrators competed to present the most beautiful volumes to the gift market.

Rip Van Winkle is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, published in 1819 as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains and follows Rip Van Winkle, a Dutch American villager who falls asleep before the American Revolution and wakes up twenty years later to a very different world. His disappearance and return are met with incredulity by those around him. This tale is known for its themes of change and continuity, the American past, and individualism.