1882 Scare Book - Moonshine Fairy Stories Illustrated by William Brunton. First Edition.
(description)
Author: LORD BRABOURNE, E. H. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN.
Title: Moonshine Fairy Stories. Illustrated by William Brunton.
Publisher: London, George Routledge And Sons, 1882. First Edition.
Language: Text in English
Size : 7.5 " X 5 "
Pages : x-338 pages
Binding: Attractive, good to very good original full Victorian decorated pictorial cloth binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Good content (bright, and tight, some foxing and staining mainly on full-page plates corners without affecting the illustrations - as shown, name of a previous owner on the first endpaper - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the frontis, the vignette and the 7 full-page illustrations by William Brunton.
Estimation : (Scarce with practically no other copy available worldwide).
The book: Scarce and attractive edition of Moonshine Fairy Stories by Lord Brabourne and Illustrated by William Brunton.
The author: Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron Brabourne PC (29 April 1829 – 6 February 1893), known as E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, was a British Liberal politician. He served as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department under Lord Russell in 1866 and under William Ewart Gladstone from 1868 to 1871 and was also Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies under Gladstone from 1871 to 1874. In 1880 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Brabourne.
In a letter of 1971, J. R. R. Tolkien recalled that, as a small child, his bedtime reading was the fairy stories of Knatchbull-Hugessen. He recalled especially being read one story of an ogre who catches his dinner by disguising himself as a tree.
The illustrator: William S. (Billy) Brunton, was born in 1833 in Dublin, son of a an engraver and copper-plate printer. He studied at the drawing school of the Royal Dublin Society from 1847, and exhibited figure paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1854 and 1856.
He moved to London to work as a magazine illustrator and cartoonist, contributing to Punch (1859), The Illustrated Times (1861, 1866), London Society (1863, 1865, 1968), Tinsley's Magazine (1867), Cassell's Illustrated Readings (1867), The Broadway (1867-74) and Moonshine (1871), and was on the staff of Fun, where he contributed regular observational comic sketches. He also illustrated children's books, including Tales at Tea-Time by E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen (1872). He signed his work with a heart pierced by an arrow, made with the letters W and B.
He was a Bohemian and a founder of the Savage Club, apparently a very jovial man with an odd but infectious sense of humour, and died young, the implication being from his excesses, in Holloway, London, on 24 March 1878.