Aesop's Fables. Translated by Vernon Jones. With an Introduction by G. K. Chesterton.

Signed limited edition, number 379 of 1,450 copies signed by the artist. It is also the first edition of this translation by Vernon Jones. "The peculiar secret of Rackham's success in seizing upon the essence of the human and portraying it in animal form, which is after all the basic device of the morality, is unwittingly touched upon in Chesterton's delightful introduction to the 1912 edition of Aesop's Fables: 'There can be no good fable with human beings in it. There can be no good fairy tale without them.' Rackham's genius is such that it bridges the two, and carries the didactic fable into the realm of fairy story, and lends to the imaginative world of fairies a tangible and convincing reality" (Gettings, pp. 83-84). Riall, p. 111. Fred Gettings, Arthur Rackham, 1976. Quarto. Frontispiece and 12 plates, all in colour and tipped to brown art paper, with tissue guards captioned in brown, as issued, 19 full-page black and white illustrations, line drawings in the text. Original white cloth, spine and front cover lettered and pictorially stamped in gilt, top edge gilt, others uncut. Bookplate of Cecily Mary Severne (1889-1981). Spine toned, light soiling to cloth, endpapers browned, occasional foxing. A very good copy.…