Randolph Caldecott, a Personal Memoir of His Early Art Career

First Edition: Dark green pictorial boards with gilt lettering to front board and with a black illustration against the green background, a musically minded shepherd playing a wind instrument to his mesmerised sheep, minute scuff just a dot close to the lower branch, slight fading to the gilt titles on the spine, a little creasing and rubbing to top and bottom of spine, rubbing to extreme edges of the binding, corners slightly bumped, the rear board has evidence of damp staining to the left hand edge and rear corners, generally good and clean, all edge gilt, dark brown endpapers, neat hand written ink dedication from a father to his daughter to reverse side of the front endpaper dated 1886, frontispiece being a sepia portrait of Randolph Caldecott (b1846 d 1886) , tissue protection has minor foxing and is very slightly creased, i-xvi preliminaries and contents, 210 pages followed by Appendix 211-216 being publishers advertising for his books, The book is well illustrated throughout, 'with one hundred and sevety-two illustrations. ' The pages are clean and not marked, whilst there is some foxing consistent with age to the preliminaries this does not detract from text or the pictures contained in the book. A superb insight into the work of Randolph Caldecott and this distinctive style so popular in known masterpieces from children's literature in Victorian times. …