1933 Rare Deluxe Edition - Grimm’s Fairy Tales illustrated by Noel Pocock

An exceptionally attractive 1933 Oxford edition of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, presented in the handsome white-and-gilt deluxe binding and illustrated with twenty-three mounted colour plates by Noel Pocock.

Author: Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm.
Title: Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Publisher: London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1933.
Edition: 1933 reprint of the Noel Pocock illustrated edition, first issued with his illustrations in 1913.
Language: English.
Pages: viii, 346 pages.
Size: 9.5 x 7 inches.
Binding: Near fine original white cloth binding, strikingly decorated and lettered in gilt to the upper board and spine, the cover depicting a hilltop castle rising above a village and the spine carrying a finely detailed fairy-tale scene. The gilt remains remarkably bright and the pale cloth unusually clean, with only very light age wear to the extremities as shown. Teal-blue endpapers. Top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content, complete, crisp and firmly bound. Pages generally clean and well preserved, with occasional light spotting and some age toning to the untrimmed edges. The colour plates remain particularly fresh and bright.
Illustrations: Illustrated in colour by Noel Pocock with a mounted colour frontispiece and twenty-two additional mounted colour plates, twenty-three in all, together with pictorial initials and decorative typography. The plates are mounted on grey-toned supports and display Pocock’s rich, atmospheric palette and dramatic treatment of the Grimm tales.

Estimate: US$400–450.

The book: This substantial collection brings together fifty-five tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, ranging from Hansel and Grethel, Snow-Drop, Tom Thumb, The Elves and the Shoemaker and Rumple-stilts-kin to less frequently encountered stories such as The Young Giant, The Crows and the Soldier and The King of the Golden Mountain. Pocock’s illustrations give the familiar stories a particularly sumptuous early twentieth-century character, balancing the enchantment of the fairy-tale world with the darker atmosphere that lies beneath many of the Grimm narratives.

This edition is especially appealing in the publisher’s deluxe white-and-gilt binding. Pocock’s illustrated version was first issued in 1913, and the present 1933 printing retains the elaborate production values of that earlier edition, including the full complement of twenty-three mounted colour plates. 

The authors: Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), collectively known as the Brothers Grimm, were German scholars, philologists and folklorists whose collections of traditional tales became among the most influential works in the history of children’s literature. Their Kinder- und Hausmärchen, first published in the early nineteenth century, preserved and transformed a vast body of European oral storytelling and introduced generations of readers to characters and stories that have become part of the shared cultural imagination.

The illustrator: Ralph Noël Pocock (1878–1949) was a British illustrator, cartoonist and graphic artist whose book work included early illustrations for P. G. Wodehouse as well as a number of important children’s classics. His work for Grimm’s Fairy Tales is among his most admired achievements. The illustrations combine strong modelling, theatrical lighting and deep jewel-like colours with an occasionally unsettling realism particularly suited to the mixture of wonder, menace and humour found in the Grimm stories.