More Tales of the Stumps

Publisher's tan cloth ruled in black. Front cover pictorially stamped in green, white and tan and lettered in white. Spine pictorially stamped in white and tan and lettered in gilt. Black coated endpapers. Spine very slightly darkened and with split along rear joint, but still sound. Blind stamp of W.H. Smith, London on front free end-paper, ink inscription dated 1904 on verso. Octavo (7 3/16 x 4 7/8 in; 184 x 123 mm). 224 pages. Eleven black and white illustrations by Arthur Rackham, of which four are full-page. Also a frontispiece and ten black & white illustrations by 'RIP'. A near fine copy of a spectacularly rare Arthur Rackham title. A collection of short stories with a cricket setting, and the companion volume to Tales of the Stumps, which was not illustrated by Rackham. Cartoonist 'RIP' aka Rowland Hill (1873-1925). Born in Halifax in 1873 and worked at Halifax before studying at Bradford School of Art and at the Herkomer School, Bushey. Travelled on the continent and settled in Hinderwell, Yorks, 1908. (Simon Houfe). Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children's books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic-from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe. Riall 47.…