1917 First Edition - he Romance of King Arthur and His Knights by Arthur Rackham
The 1917 First Edition of Malory’s Arthurian legend illustrated by Arthur Rackham, complete with all sixteen atmospheric colour plates and his extensive black-and-white artwork throughout.
Author: Sir Thomas Malory; abridged by Alfred W. Pollard; illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
Title: The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.
Publisher: London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, St. Martin’s Street, 1917.
Edition: First Edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham. First Trade Edition.
Language: English.
Pages: xxiv, 509 pages.
Size: 8.5 x 7 inches.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s dark blue cloth binding, richly decorated and lettered in gilt to the front board and spine with Rackham’s medieval design. The binding remains firm and attractive, with light rubbing, minor surface marks and scattered pale spotting to the cloth consistent with age, as shown. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content, complete, tight and well preserved. Pages remain generally clean with occasional light foxing and age toning, more noticeable to the endpapers and preliminaries, as shown. No significant defects noted.
Illustrations: Complete with all 16 full-page colour plates by Arthur Rackham, each accompanied by a captioned tissue guard. Also illustrated with 7 full-page black-and-white plates and numerous additional black-and-white drawings, decorative headings, tailpieces and vignettes throughout.
Estimate: USD 400–600.
The book:
First published in this illustrated form in 1917, The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table presents Alfred W. Pollard’s carefully abridged version of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. The volume follows Arthur from his mysterious birth and the drawing of Excalibur through the adventures of Merlin, Lancelot, Tristram and Isoud, Galahad and the quest for the Holy Grail, to the final tragedy of the Arthurian kingdom. A glossary concludes the volume.
The book appeared during the First World War, at a moment when medieval ideals of chivalry, loyalty and sacrifice carried particular resonance in Britain. Rackham’s interpretation is among the most substantial illustrated treatments of the Arthurian cycle from the Golden Age of Illustration. His sixteen colour plates range from violent battle scenes to haunting encounters with enchantresses and supernatural figures, while the extensive pen-and-ink work gives the entire volume a remarkably unified visual character.
The author:
Sir Thomas Malory is traditionally credited with Le Morte d’Arthur, completed during the fifteenth century and first printed by William Caxton in 1485. Drawing together earlier English and French Arthurian traditions, Malory shaped the stories of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table into the form that has profoundly influenced later literature and popular imagination.
Alfred W. Pollard (1859–1944), one of the leading British bibliographers and Shakespearean scholars of his generation, prepared this abridgement of Malory. His selection preserves the central narrative and much of Malory’s distinctive prose while making the vast medieval work more approachable for a twentieth-century readership.
The illustrator:
Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) was one of the defining illustrators of the Golden Age of British book illustration. His distinctive combination of delicate pen work, muted watercolour and an extraordinary imagination made him particularly suited to folklore, fairy tales and medieval romance.