1895 Scarce Victorian Illustrated Edition - Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault
This book has been sold, but we regularly acquire comparable copies.
An exceptionally decorative late-Victorian edition of twenty-four classic French fairy tales, bringing together Perrault, Madame de Villeneuve, Madame Leprince de Beaumont and others in J. R. Planché’s celebrated translation, richly illustrated and preserved in a striking silver-highlighted pictorial binding.
Authors: Charles Perrault; Madame de Villeneuve; Comte de Caylus; Mlle de Lubert; Madame Leprince de Beaumont; and others. Translated by J. R. Planché.
Title: Fairy Tales.
Publisher: London: George Routledge and Sons, Limited, Broadway, Ludgate Hill, Manchester and New York, circa 1895. Undated.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 7.5 x 5 inches.
Pages: xi, 558 pages, followed by publisher’s catalogue.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s royal-blue cloth binding, spectacularly decorated to the upper board with an elaborate pictorial composition of fairies, pixies and fantastical creatures surrounding a giant mushroom, blocked in black, biscuit, grey and silver. Ornately decorated spine lettered and illustrated in gilt, black and silver. Light rubbing and wear to the extremities, some minor surface marks and age-related wear, but the elaborate decoration remains remarkably vivid and the binding is solid and highly attractive. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, sound, clean and complete, with only occasional light spotting, handling marks and age-toning. Original tissue guard retained at the engraved portrait frontispiece, with a light marginal crease as shown. A pleasing and well-preserved copy internally.
Illustrations: Profusely illustrated with numerous accomplished full-page black-and-white engravings by James Godwin, Edward Henry Corbould and William Harvey, including scenes from The Sleeping Beauty, Perfect Love, Young and Handsome, The Prince of Leaves, The Good Woman, and Beauty and the Beast. Complete.
Estimate: (USD 300–350).
The book: A wonderfully evocative Victorian gathering of twenty-four French fairy tales, ranging from some of the most enduring stories in the Western tradition—Blue Beard, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Puss in Boots, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast—to considerably less familiar tales such as Fairer Than a Fairy, The Prince of Leaves, The Impossible Enchantment and The Widow and Her Two Daughters. The collection was originally published by Routledge in 1858 under the fuller title Four and Twenty Fairy Tales, with J. R. Planché selecting and translating tales from Perrault and a succession of important French writers.
This later nineteenth-century edition is especially desirable for its remarkably imaginative publisher’s binding: the brilliant blue cloth provides a theatrical background for its silver fairies, nocturnal creatures and enormous mushroom, giving the volume an unmistakably magical character even before it is opened. Inside, the dense Victorian engravings complement the stories beautifully and make this a particularly attractive example of the illustrated fairy-tale tradition.
The authors and translator: Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was one of the foundational figures of the literary fairy tale, establishing enduring versions of stories including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots and Bluebeard. The volume broadens that tradition by incorporating tales by several other important French writers, among them Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, author of the extended original version of Beauty and the Beast, and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, whose later adaptation became the best-known form of the tale. J. R. Planché (1796–1880), an English dramatist, antiquarian and herald, translated and arranged the twenty-four tales chronologically in an effort to trace the development of the French fairy-tale tradition.
The illustrators: James Godwin, Edward Henry Corbould and William Harvey were accomplished nineteenth-century British illustrators whose work appeared in many of the period’s important illustrated books. Their detailed compositions lend the volume a distinctly Victorian visual richness, moving between romance, fantasy, Gothic drama and humour.