F I N E B O O K S & M A N U S C R I P T S
FORD MADOX FORD’S RAREST BOOK
24. Christina’s Fairy Book [FORD, Ford Madox] HUEFFER, Ford Madox
Alston Rivers Ltd., [1906]. First edition. 16mo. Original publisher’s pictorial paper cov- ered boards over a cloth spine lettered in dark blue. Pictorial endpapers by Dion Clay- ton Calthorp. A very good copy indeed, clean and bright with only the slightest wear to the edges of the boards. An exceptionally well preserved example of a very rare book. [42213] £9,500 Ford Madox Ford’s rarest book. No copies have been recorded at auction and we are aware of only one other copy being offered for sale in living memory. In a piece accompanying the 1981 Princeton exhibition of Edward Naumburg’s monumental col- lection of Conrad and Ford, Richard Ludwig comments, “The rarest book in the whole collection is, in fact, Christina’s Fairy Book (1906), written for his first child and published in decorated boards. Mr. Naumburg recalls it took him 15 years to find a copy and, so far as he knows, the only other copy is in the British Library in London.” In fact, Naumburg understates its rarity. He began collecting in the late 1920s and published a checklist of Ford in the Princeton Library Chronicle in 1948, based on his near comprehensive col- lection. His entry for Christina’s Fairy Book there is based on the British Library copy as Naumburg had not then seen a copy in more that twenty years of searching. Harvey A18
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