Books

Signed limited edition, number 438 of 1,000 copies signed by the illustrator Arthur Rackham, for sale in Great Britain and Ireland. In A Midsummer Night's Dream Rackham "developed his gift for drawing witches, gnomes, fairies, and anthropomorphized trees and brought them to a pitch of vivid characterization, sometimes with an unsettling frisson of horror" (ODNB). Quarto (273 x 221 mm). Mid-20th-century blue morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, spine lettered in gilt, compartments and covers panelled in gilt, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Colour frontispiece and 39 colour plates with captioned tissue-guards mounted on heavy brown paper, black and white illustrations in the text, all by Rackham; title page printed in olive-green & black. Light spotting on occasion to contents; still a fine copy in a handsome binding. Latimore & Haskell, p. 32; Riall, p. 87.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Russian: Сон смешного человека) is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky written in 1877. It chronicles the experiences of a man who believes nothing has any value and is ripe with existential insights into human life and a reformation of spirit.