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1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape
1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape

1911 Rare Book - At the Back of the North Wind Illustrated by Frank C. Pape

$250 USD - $250 USD
$250 USD
$250 USD - $250 USD
$250 USD

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A particularly attractive early illustrated edition of George MacDonald’s great fantasy classic, combining Frank C. Papé’s dreamlike colour plates with Arthur Hughes’s celebrated black-and-white illustrations, in Blackie’s striking Art Nouveau pictorial binding.

Author: George MacDonald.
Title: At the Back of the North Wind.
Illustrators: Frank C. Papé and Arthur Hughes.
Publisher: London, Glasgow and Bombay: Blackie and Son Limited, no date [circa 1911].
Edition: First Edition thus, the first edition with Frank C. Papé’s colour illustrations, retaining Arthur Hughes’s original black-and-white illustrations.
Language: English.
Pages: vi, 391 pages.
Size: 8 x 5.5 inches.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s dark blue cloth binding, superbly decorated to the upper board and spine in orange, green and cream in an elaborate Art Nouveau design of stylized flowers and geometric borders. The front board incorporates the original mounted colour illustration beneath the decorative framework, with the title boldly printed in orange below. Spine similarly decorated and lettered. Light rubbing and minor wear to the extremities and spine ends, with a little surface wear consistent with age, but the colours remain notably strong and the overall presentation exceptionally attractive, as shown. Binding firm and sound. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, complete and firmly bound. Pages generally clean and well preserved, with occasional light foxing and age toning, principally to the preliminaries, margins and endpapers, as shown. No significant markings apparent. The colour plates remain bright and attractive.
Illustrations: Complete with twelve full-page colour illustrations by Frank C. Papé, including the frontispiece The Prince and the Good Fairy, together with seventy-six black-and-white text illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Papé’s atmospheric colour plates offer an early twentieth-century reinterpretation of MacDonald’s fantasy, while Hughes’s illustrations preserve the visual tradition associated with the story from its earliest editions.

Estimate: US$300–400.

The book: At the Back of the North Wind was first published in book form in 1871 and remains one of George MacDonald’s most important works of fantasy literature. The story follows Diamond, the gentle young son of a poor coachman, whose mysterious encounters with the personified North Wind carry him between everyday Victorian life and a strange, dreamlike realm beyond ordinary experience.

Although ostensibly a children’s story, the novel explores remarkably sophisticated themes of suffering, mortality, goodness, faith and the nature of happiness. Diamond’s innocence and extraordinary compassion stand in deliberate contrast to the hardship surrounding him, while North Wind herself alternates between tenderness, danger and mystery. The result is one of the defining works of nineteenth-century fantasy and a major influence on the development of the genre.

This Blackie edition is especially desirable for its unusual combination of two important illustrative traditions. Arthur Hughes’s black-and-white drawings, originally created for the story, are retained throughout the text, while Frank C. Papé contributes twelve full-page colour plates whose softer, more ethereal imagery gives the book a distinctly Edwardian character. The exceptionally decorative publisher’s cloth, with its stylized flowers and integrated pictorial panel, makes this one of the most visually appealing early twentieth-century editions of MacDonald’s classic.

The author: George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a Scottish novelist, poet, minister and one of the foundational figures of modern fantasy literature. His imaginative works—including The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes and Lilith—profoundly influenced later writers such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. MacDonald was also closely associated with Lewis Carroll and encouraged the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland after reading the manuscript to his own children.

The illustrator: Frank Cheyne Papé (1878–1972) was an English artist and book illustrator whose distinctive work combined fantasy, humour, romance and a remarkable sense of atmosphere. He became particularly celebrated for his illustrations to the works of James Branch Cabell, Anatole France and François Rabelais. His colour illustrations for At the Back of the North Wind belong to an earlier, gentler phase of his career, characterized by muted colours, delicate modelling and an almost dreamlike treatment of MacDonald’s supernatural world.

Arthur Hughes (1832–1915) was an English painter and illustrator closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His illustrations for MacDonald’s fiction are among the most important examples of Victorian children’s book illustration, their flowing line, emotional intensity and otherworldly atmosphere perfectly complementing MacDonald’s blend of domestic realism and spiritual fantasy.

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