Art Deco
VREDENBURG, Capt. Edric (editor). Jennie HARBOUR (illustrator). My Book of Favourite Fairy Tales, told by the editor and others. London; Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd. Circa 1921.

4to.; publisher’s mid-blue cloth-backed glazed pictorial boards, spine lettered in black; pp. [viii], 9-[144] including publisher’s catalogue; illustrated with 12 striking Art Deco coloured plates by Jennie Harbour and glorious silhouette and black-and-white illustrations in profusion; an attractive copy of a scarce and desirable book, with some wear to board edges and forecorners, slightly exposing board, and some grey scattered marking to lower cover, spine slightly bruised at ends but no splitting; internally very clean throughout with a neat gift inscription to half-title offset-toning to the same, but completely free of the usual foxing, with one coloured plate neatly reinserted and a tiny closed edge tear to one leaf (10mm).

Very early edition of a highly sought-after, and beautiful, book first published in 1921; here in the prettier binding of pictorial boards. It first appeared in plain blue cloth.

This fairy tale collection comprises ‘The Old Old Stories’; ‘The Goose Girl’; ‘Little Snow-White’; ‘Cinderella’; ‘Princess Goldenhair’; ‘Little Red Riding Hood’; ‘The White Fawn’; ‘Hansel and Grethel’; ‘Snow White and Rose-Red’; ‘The Sleeping Beauty’; ‘Prince Cheri’; ‘The White Cat’; ‘Bluebeard’; ‘Beauty And The Beast’; ‘Tufty Riquet’, and ‘Thumbelina’.

Fascinatingly the mystical full-page black-and-white illustration to ‘Hansel and Grethel’ on page 62 inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s black-and-white illustration “The Trolls” which has appeared in The Hobbit since 1937.   This is acknowledged in scholarly Tolkien circles.  Tolkien came across the drawing in a later and revised edition of his daughter’s copy of the book (containing only eight of the fifteen stories) called ‘The Fairy Tales Book’ published in 1934, c.f. Doug Anderson. The Annotated Hobbit, Revised.  (Information courtesy of David Demers.)