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1 ADAMS, Richard. Watership Down. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books / Kestrel Books, 1976 inscribed by the author
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First illustrated edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the half-title, “To Elizabeth Gant with best wishes from Richard Adams”. Inscribed copies of this edition are rare. Elizabeth Gant, an antiquarian bookseller, ran a bookshop for many years with business premises on the High Street, Thames Ditton in Surrey. She specialized in early children’s and illustrated books. Initially turned down by all major publishing houses, Watership Down was finally issued by Rex Collings in 1972; sales were over 100,000 in the first year and Adams was awarded both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for children’s fiction. The first illustrated edition was published in 1976. For over two months, John Lawrence visited the Berkshire countryside with his sketchbook, making numerous drawings for this edition. Writing about the illustrator in The Guardian in June 2003, Joanna Carey noted that in Lawrence’s “lyrical watercolours for Watership Down , he creates rabbits which, while entirely naturalistic and non-anthropomorphic, are full of character”. Large octavo. Original cream boards with brown cloth spine, spine lettered in gilt and black, yellow endpapers. With dust jacket and publisher’s slipcase. Illustrated by John Lawrence. Spine slightly sunned, minor abrasions to front cover, corners bumped, a near-fine and attractive copy. Jacket slightly tanned at spine with small tears and abrasions, extremities slightly frayed, else a good and unclipped jacket. Slipcase sunned on back panel, but a near-fine and bright example. £1,500 [150804]
2 AGNIVTSEV, Nikolai Yakovlevich. Chashka chaia (“A Cup of Tea”). Moscow and Leningrad: Raduga, 1925 A striking visual critique of interwar international commerce First and sole edition, first printing, of this scarce 1920s indictment of the bourgeois exploitation of Chinese tea producers, aimed at Russian children. Copies of this fragile publication rarely survive, with just two copies located in WorldCat: the New York Public Library and Princeton. Raduga (“Rainbow”) was “one of the most important publishing houses of its kind not only during the Soviet period, but of the early twentieth century” (Cotsen, p. 343). Its picture books were exhibited abroad to wide acclaim, but at home they came increasingly under attack by critics who argued that they were not in keeping with new Soviet ideas of proletarian literature. After eight years of operations, Raduga was shut down and its backlist taken over by the state publisher Gozidat. Chashka chaia was one of Raduga’s failed attempts to conform to increasingly stringent official guidelines on the boundaries of acceptable cultural production. The book takes the reader on a visual journey through Chinese tea manufacturing, depicting the pickers who harvest it and the officials and merchants who take home the profit while ferrying it to Russia. However, the striking imagery in this work, exploiting standard European stereotypes of Chinese
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3 ALLINGHAM, Helen. “Tired Out”. 1875 Original artwork by Hardy’s “best illustrator”
people in the early 20th century, came under attack from Soviet critics for depicting workers as foolish and silly rather than noble and heroic. The Russian poet and children’s author Nikolai Agnivtsev (1888–1932) authored over twenty children’s books in the 1920s, including a number for Raduga of which all are now scarce. Chashka chaia was illustrated by Vladislav Tvardovskii (1888–1942), a graduate of the Academy of Arts and an in- house illustrator for Raduga. He is credited with designing around ten books for the publisher, including another of Agnivtsev’s works, Vintik-shpuntik (“The Little Screw”), also published in 1925. Quarto (276 × 219 mm), pp. 13. Original illustrated paper wrappers. Colour illustrations throughout drawn by Vladislav Tvardovskii. Some neat restoration, staples renewed, faint stains throughout, illustrations bright and sharp. Overall a very good copy of this fragile publication. ¶ Cotsen Children’s Library, “The Anna Baksht Benjamin Family Collection of Raduga Books”, The Princeton University Library Chronicle , vol. 65, no. 2, Winter 2004, pp. 343–356. £1,500 [151240]
The artist Helen Allingham (1848–1926) enjoyed success within late Victorian periodicals, including her illustrations for the serial version of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd for The Cornhill Magazine in 1874, for example. As noted by Houfe, the artist’s “scope as an illustrator was in cottage and rural life with some portraits”. Publication of the present piece is currently untraced. Hardy described Allingham as “the best illustrator I ever had” in a letter to James Osgood dated 6 December 1888 and, again, almost two decades later, in a letter to Edmund Gosse, dated 25 July 1906 ( Collected Letters , volume 1, p. 181 and volume 3, p. 218). Original drawing (243 × 196 mm) on paper, laid down on artist’s board, watercolour, signed with initials and dated (“HA 75”) lower right, mounted, framed, and glazed (408 × 353 mm). Fine and unfaded. ¶ Richard Little Purdy, ed., Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Volume One: 1840–1892 , 1978; Volume Three: 1903–1908 , 1982. £6,750 [154960]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
CHILDREN’S BOOKS & ORIGINAL ARTWORK
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