1907 Rare Book - Indian Fairy Tales. Gathered from the Hindoos, Illustrated
This book has been sold, but we regularly acquire comparable copies.
A wonderfully decorative early twentieth-century edition of Joseph Jacobs’s landmark collection of Indian folk and fairy tales, complete with John D. Batten’s evocative illustrations and preserved in the striking pictorial binding of A. L. Burt’s celebrated Fairy Library.
Author: Joseph Jacobs (gathered and edited).
Title: Indian Fairy Tales. Gathered from the Hindoos and Edited by Joseph Jacobs.
Illustrator: John D. Batten.
Publisher: New York: A. L. Burt Company, no date [circa 1907].
Edition: Early American illustrated reprint. This copy is in the second binding style of A. L. Burt’s Fairy Library, distinguished by the fairy standing upon a large bumblebee; this binding was used from 1907 into the late 1910s.
Language: English.
Pages: x, 314 pages + publisher’s catalogue.
Size: 7.5 x 5 inches.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s pale blue pictorial cloth binding, strikingly decorated to the upper board in black, pink, yellow and gilt with a winged fairy standing above an enormous bumblebee, within a gilt and black border. The spine is similarly decorated with gilt lettering and a fairy figure. Light rubbing and soiling, some wear and softening to the corners, and minor wear at the spine ends, as shown. Hinges remain sound and the binding firm. Dark grey endpapers. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Good content, complete and firmly bound. Pages show general age toning together with scattered light staining and foxing throughout, occasionally more noticeable in the margins, as shown. Despite these signs of age, the text remains clear and the illustrations are well preserved.
Illustrations: Complete with the illustrated frontispiece of Princess Labam, eight additional full-page plates, and numerous finely detailed black-and-white illustrations, decorative initials and vignettes by John D. Batten.
Estimate: US$200–225.
The book: First published in 1892, Indian Fairy Tales is one of Joseph Jacobs’s important collections of traditional folklore, following his influential English Fairy Tales and Celtic Fairy Tales. The volume gathers twenty-nine tales, among them The Lion and the Crane, How the Raja’s Son Won the Princess Labam, The Lambikin, Punchkin, The Magic Fiddle, The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal, The Charmed Ring, Raja Rasalu, The Demon with the Matted Hair, and The Ivory City and its Fairy Princess. Jacobs also provides an extensive concluding section of notes and references identifying the literary and folkloric sources of the stories.
One of the particular attractions of this edition is its exceptionally charming Burt Fairy Library binding. The series included Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales, Celtic Fairy Tales and Indian Fairy Tales alongside collections by Andrew Lang, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and others; the distinctive fairy-and-bumblebee design seen here was introduced for the series in 1907.
The author: Joseph Jacobs (1854–1916) was an Australian-born folklorist, historian, critic and editor whose collections played a major role in establishing many traditional tales in the form in which they became familiar to English-speaking readers. His collections ranged beyond English folklore to Celtic, Indian and Jewish traditions, combining literary storytelling with serious comparative folklore scholarship.
The illustrator: John Dickson Batten (1860–1932) was an English painter, printmaker and book illustrator closely associated with Jacobs’s fairy-tale collections. His intricate, highly decorative black-and-white work draws upon medieval, Arts and Crafts and fin-de-siècle design, making his illustrations particularly well suited to the fantastical and folkloric atmosphere of these stories.