1912 Rare 1stED - Folk-Tales of Bengal Illustrated by Warwick Goble, Fairy Tales
An attractive and uncommon 1912 first Warwick Goble illustrated edition of this important collection of Bengali folklore, complete with all 32 evocative colour illustrations and handsomely bound in half leather.
Author: Rev. Lal Behari Day. Illustrated by Warwick Goble.
Title: Folk-Tales of Bengal. With 32 Illustrations in Colour by Warwick Goble.
Publisher: London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1912.
Edition: First Edition illustrated by Warwick Goble. The work was originally published in 1883; this is the first edition with Goble’s colour illustrations.
Language: Text in English.
Pages: xiv-273 pages.
Size: 9.5" x 7".
Binding: Attractive very good half-leather binding over marbled boards, with raised bands, gilt title to spine, and decorative blind tooling. Binding firm and handsome, with only light wear and rubbing consistent with age, as shown. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, bright, tight and generally clean, with only occasional light age-toning and minor spotting, as shown.
Illustrations: Complete with all 32 full-page colour illustrations by Warwick Goble, including the colour frontispiece. The plates remain particularly attractive, with delicate colouring and the atmospheric quality for which Goble’s work is admired.
Estimate: $400–500 USD.
The book:
Folk-Tales of Bengal is one of the important early collections of Bengali traditional stories presented to an English-speaking readership. First published in 1883, the tales were gathered and retold by Lal Behari Day from the rich oral storytelling traditions of Bengal. They encompass enchanted princes and princesses, demons, holy men, magical animals, impossible quests, transformations and the supernatural, preserving a remarkable body of popular folklore from nineteenth-century India.
This 1912 Macmillan edition is especially sought after because it introduced Warwick Goble’s magnificent series of 32 colour illustrations. His dreamlike watercolours, filled with palaces, forests, supernatural beings and richly costumed figures, are ideally suited to the exotic and fantastic atmosphere of the tales. The combination of Day’s important folkloric text and Goble’s Golden Age illustrations makes this one of the most desirable illustrated collections of Indian fairy and folk tales of the period.
The author:
Lal Behari Day (1824–1894) was a Bengali Indian writer, journalist, educator and Christian clergyman. Deeply interested in the lives and traditions of rural Bengal, he is remembered particularly for Bengal Peasant Life and Folk-Tales of Bengal. His work helped preserve stories that had long circulated orally and might otherwise have been lost or substantially altered with the passing of generations.
His collection occupies an important place in the history of Indian folklore studies. Rather than inventing literary fairy tales, Day sought to record stories rooted in Bengali popular tradition, providing later scholars and readers with an invaluable window into the imagination, beliefs and storytelling culture of nineteenth-century Bengal.
The illustrator:
Warwick Goble (1862–1943) was a celebrated British illustrator of the Golden Age of book illustration, particularly admired for his interpretations of fairy tales, mythology and stories from Asia. His delicate watercolour technique, subtle palette and remarkable ability to evoke atmosphere made him particularly well suited to fantastical and exotic subjects.
Goble illustrated several major collections of Eastern tales, and his work for Folk-Tales of Bengal is among his most desirable achievements. The 32 colour plates combine architectural detail, costume, landscape and fantasy with an ethereal quality that has made his illustrated books enduring favourites among collectors of Golden Age illustration.