Somebody's Pussies

20 cardboard pages. 25 cm. Colour or partial colour illustrations on each page. Red cloth spine with small black cat image. Colour illustrations on front and back boards. Pages have decorative borders with more cats. Tears in spine ends and hinges. Corners and edges worn. Scuffing to surface of board. Pencil signature on ownership panel inside front cover and pencil mark above. Some thumbing within. Pages loosening. Cracked at pp. 14-15. Louis Wain (1860 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats and kittens. His fame became established with the publication of his first cat drawing, A Kitten's Christmas Party, in the 1886 Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News. By 1890, he was a household name, and, in acknowledgment of his expertise on cats, was elected president of the National Cat Club. In the1890s, he turned his hand to illustrating children's books; over his lifetime there would be more than 100 beautiful books such as this. He also drew the first ever screen cartoon cat, "Pussyfoot," but the cartoons were not a cinema success. Never becoming wealthy, he spent his life supporting his mother and five sisters. In his later years he suffered a head injury and was committed to the pauper's ward in a mental hospital where he continued to draw and paint. Though Wain never seems to have had a break in life, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald wrote, "Probably no artist has given a greater number of young people pleasure than he has.".…