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[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. SHAKESPEARE, William. A Midsummer-Night's Dream. With Illustrations by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1908.
Edition de Luxe. Limited to 1,000 copies (this copy being No. 591), numbered and signed by the illustrator. Large quarto (11 1/2 x 9 1/16 inches; 292 x 231 mm.). [8], 134, [1, blank], [1, printer's imprint] pp. Forty color plates mounted on brown paper, with descriptive tissue guards, and thirty drawings in black and white.
Original vellum over boards pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine. Top edge gilt, others uncut. Original gold silk ties. Bookplate. Minimal discoloration to spine, otherwise a near fine copy.
"Within twelve months appeared Shakespeare's A Midsummer-Night's Dream, De la Motte Fouqué's Undine, and the Grimm brothers' Fairy Tales, all very different in quality and feeling, as demanded by the texts, but all of extremely high quality.
The Dream was, of course, an almost perfect setting for Rackham's devic imagination -- perhaps only bettered by the opportunity of The Tempest -- with the result that some of the fairies, elves and goblins he created for this play are among his finest colour images, and almost all the plates echo perfectly the mysterious interweaving of lightness and depth in this great work. Many of the formal plates are exquisite, whether they depict the principal events of the main theme of the story, such as the translated Bottom with his ass-head mocked by tree sprites, or the night-rule of Titania's haunted grove, those incidents within the subsidiary action, with details hardly dreamed of by Shakespeare, such as the gnomish knife-grinder in a motley group of fairies. Some of the floriated headings for the Dream are the finest of Rackham's line at the time, as for example the heading vignette for Act One, Scene One, which with typical Rackham irrelevance spreads its tendrils over the page, and into the text, ignoring the fact that the setting is supposed, according to Shakespeare, to be the Palace of Theseus, and throwing us immediately into a tangle-wood Rackhamerie, with mice, pixies and a sleeping maiden."
(Fred Gettings. Arthur Rackham, pp. 117-123).
Latimore and Haskell, p. 32. Gettings, p. 177. Riall, p. 87.
Price: $4,250
(To order this item, or for more information, please call 818-222-4103)
