1863 Rare 1stED -The Fairy Book, Best Popular Fairy Stories by Dinah Maria Craik
An attractive 1863 first edition of Dinah Maria Craik’s influential Victorian fairy-tale anthology, handsomely bound in period half morocco and preserving the bookplate of Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax.
Author: CRAIK, Dinah Maria [Dinah Maria Mulock].
Title: The Fairy Book: The Best Popular Fairy Stories Selected and Rendered Anew.
Publisher: London and Cambridge, Macmillan and Co., 1863.
Edition: First edition.
Language: Text in English.
Pages: xi, 368 pages.
Size: 6.1" x 4.1".
Binding: Attractive and very good period half green morocco binding with green leather corners, contrasting burgundy boards, gilt ruling, raised bands, gilt lettering and small gilt ornaments to the spine. Light rubbing and wear to the extremities and raised bands, as shown. Marbled endpapers and marbled edges. Binding firm and very handsome overall. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, clean, bright and tight overall, with only occasional light spotting or marks consistent with age. Former owner’s engraved armorial bookplate of The Right Hon. Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax, dated 1887, mounted to the front pastedown.
Illustrations: Illustrated title page with an engraved design after J. Noel Paton, R.S.A., engraved by C. H. Jeens, together with numerous decorative wood-engraved initials, headpieces and ornaments throughout.
Estimate: USD 300–350.
The book:
A desirable first edition of The Fairy Book, Dinah Maria Craik’s collection of traditional fairy tales gathered from English and Continental sources and retold for Victorian readers. The volume includes such enduring stories as The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper, Beauty and the Beast, Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Thumb, Rumpelstilzchen, Snow-White and Rose-Red, The Frog-Prince and The Six Swans. In her preface, Craik explains her aim of presenting the finest traditional tales in forms suitable for contemporary British children while retaining their old-fashioned character.
This copy is especially appealing for its elegant period binding, marbled edges and endpapers, and distinguished nineteenth-century provenance. The combination of an important early fairy-tale anthology, its original 1863 publication date, and a handsome private binding makes it a particularly attractive example for a collection of Victorian children’s literature and folklore.
The author:
Dinah Maria Craik (1826–1887), born Dinah Maria Mulock, was a prolific English novelist, poet and writer for children. She achieved lasting fame with her 1856 novel John Halifax, Gentleman, under whose authorship The Fairy Book was originally advertised.
Craik’s fairy-tale collection belongs to the important nineteenth-century movement that brought traditional oral and Continental tales into the Victorian nursery. Drawing upon sources including Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy and the Brothers Grimm, she helped make many of these stories familiar to generations of English-speaking children.