1887 Rare Book - The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, Photographs Illustrated

Author: Mary Cowden Clarke. Condensed by her sister Sabilla Novello.
Title: The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines: A Series of Fifteen Tales.
Publisher: London, Bickers and Son, 1 Leicester Square, 1887.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 8.5" x 5.5".
Pages: vi-456 pages.
Binding: Attractive and near fine publisher’s original terra-cotta pictorial cloth binding, beautifully decorated in gilt and black on the front board and spine with Shakespearean maidens and floral motifs, enclosed in ornate panels (hinges fine, overall slightly scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. All edges gilt. A near-fine example of late Victorian book design.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare light foxing or staining - as shown, early ownership signature “Agnes R. Middleton, Xmas 1886” on the front endpaper - as shown, inner hinge of endpapers worn but still tight - as shown). 
Illustrations: Complete with nine fine photogravure plates “in permanent photography” after paintings by T. F. Dicksee and W. S. Herrick, including frontispiece “Portia.” Each printed on thick stock paper.

Estimate: (USD 250–300).

The Book: A beautiful illustrated late Victorian edition of The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, Mary Cowden Clarke’s imaginative re-envisioning of the formative years of Shakespeare’s beloved female characters. First published between 1850 and 1852, this Bickers and Son 1887 edition presents the work in a newly condensed form by Sabilla Novello, the author’s sister, accompanied by sumptuous photogravures based on paintings by T. F. Dicksee and W. S. Herrick.
This edition exemplifies the high aesthetic ideals of late 19th-century British bookmaking, uniting literary imagination, moral sensibility, and artistic refinement. The richly gilt binding design, featuring two Elizabethan maidens exchanging flowers, is a quintessential example of Victorian decorative publishing at its finest.

The Author: Mary Cowden Clarke (1809–1898) was a pioneering literary scholar and writer, best known for her monumental Concordance to Shakespeare (1844–45) and her creative reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s female characters. Her Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines sought to give voice and depth to the women who appear only briefly or symbolically in Shakespeare’s plays, imagining their youth and inner lives with sensitivity and moral purpose — a revolutionary concept for its time.

The Illustrators: Thomas Francis Dicksee (1819–1895) and William Stewart Herrick (1829–1915) were noted Victorian painters associated with the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. Their renderings of Shakespearean heroines—Juliet, Ophelia, Desdemona, and others—are infused with romantic sentiment and refined emotional realism. The photogravures included here translate their art with remarkable delicacy and tonal depth, complementing Clarke’s lyrical prose.