Books

x, 69 pp. With frontispiece and 50 tipped-in color plates with printed tissue guards and text illustrations in black and white by Arthur Rackham. Folio, publisher's full vellum with silk ribbon ties, lettered and illustrated in gold, t.e.g. Preserved in a custom cloth clamshell box. First French edition; No. 106 of 200 copies signed by Arthur Rackham. Attractive small book label on pastedown; otherwise a spectacularly fine copy.

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.