NEW YORK ANTIQUARIAN BOOK FAIR 2026
19. DULAC, Edmund “Whereupon she instantly desired her partner to lead her to the King and Queen” An Original Water- colour for Cinderella London, 1910 [45497] A large original ink and watercolour painting on artist’s board which illustrates the story of Cinderella, in Dulac’s 1910 gift book, The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales . 317 x 259 mm. Signed and dated lower right (“Edmund Dulac 10”). In fine and unfaded condition. $82,500 An exceptional watercolour from what is generally regarded as Dulac’s finest work. “Mr Dulac’s illustrations are, of course, the reason for this beautiful book’s being. Mr Dulac, like Mr Rackham, has a genius for taking the classics of childhood and giving them a new interest for old readers. Children will probably object that he does not really illustrate the stories, but merely uses them as a sort of screen upon which to throw his magic arrangements of bright and moony colours” (The English Review). A review of the Leicester Galleries exhibition stated that “in... Dulac’s watercolour illustrations to fairy tales... there is the same feeling for har- monious colour and decorative composition which has always distin- guished his art” (The Academy). In his study of Dulac, Colin White specifically compared this illustra - tion with “two other watercolours of similar encounters between lovers, drawn in 1912 and 1913 respectively, by Hugh Thomson and Kay Niels- en”. Ultimately, White concluded that “each illustrator has an entirely dif - ferent approach; each in his own way succeeds admirably”, but in Dulac, “penwork is used mainly to define figures and objects, and it is the col -
18. DONALDSON, Julia; SCHEFFLER, Axel THE GRUF - FALO Macmillan, 1999 [46666] First edition. Original publish- er’s laminated pictorial paper covered boards decorated in a wraparound design by Axel Scheffler. Pictorial endpapers. Illustrated in colour throughout by Scheffler. A near fine copy, with a little wear to one corner and a few tiny indentations to the boards, but overall an crisp, bright copy. $17,500 The author’s most famous work, the first edition of which has become one of the rarest and most keenly sought of all modern children’s literature. The idea for the book was suggest- ed to Donaldson by her publisher in 1994. The year before Methuen had published A Squash and a Squeeze, based on a song written for BBC
Children’s Television and they now suggested something based on a folk story. Donaldson unearthed a Chinese fable about a girl who escapes being eaten by a tiger by claiming to be the fearsome Queen of the Jungle and inviting him to walk behind her. The tiger misinterprets the terror of the various animals they meet as being related to her rather than him, and flees. She painstakingly adapted the fable for a wood in the Eng - lish countryside, creating a fictitious monster, revising frequently until the final draft was sent to Reid Books, who had taken over Methuen’s Children’s Books. It supposedly sat on the desk of an editor for over a year, before Donaldson sent the manuscript to Axel Sheffler, who had illustrated her first book. He in turn showed it to Macmillan who agreed to publish it on the spot. Success wasn’t immediate, but sales were steady and grew persistently as the book developed first into a best seller and then a modern classic, selling over 13 million copies worldwide in over 100 languages. Why the first edition should be quite so scarce is hard to fathom. Mac- millan report an initial print of 2000 hardback copies published in 23 March 1999: a small number but not miniscule considering it appears in commerce meaningfully less frequently that the hardback issue of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which was issued in an edition of only 500 copies. It is likely that the a large proportion of the hardback issue would have been sold to school or public libraries to be read into oblivion, and that the remainder received scarcely less rough handling by the young audience at which it was aimed. Whatever the reasons, de- spite worldwide demand among collectors, first editions of The Gruffalo appear in commerce less frequently than any other modern collectable children’s book.
our that is an essential ele- ment in mod- elling and in atmospheric effect” (White, p. 47). L I T E R A - TURE: The S l e e p i n g Beauty and Other Fairy Tales Edit- ed by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1910), p. 64.
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