Books

Irving, Washington. RIP VAN WINKLE. Hachette, Paris, 1906 (1st French edition, with text in French). Edition of 200 unsigned, numbered copies, this being copy 147 (there was also a deluxe edition of 20 copies signed by Rackham). Large quarto or small folio, full white vellum with an impressed illustration and lettering in gold, tissue-guarded tipped-in color frontispiece, title page with a black and white illustration, a headpiece at to the first page, 69 pages of text, an additional page with an illustration, recto, and the printer's credit, verso, and 49 tissue-guarded full page tipped-in color plates. The silk ties are laid in. Slight bowing to boards, as is usual with vellum bindings, else a 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.