Title: TANNHÄUSER>>Very Uncommon Limp Suede Edition...
Publisher: G. G. Harrap & Co, London
Publication Date: 1911
Binding: Soft cover
Book Condition: Good
Edition: 1st trade
FIRST TRADE EDITION. 4to. 223 unnumbered pages, printed on stiff grey paper with vignette or full-page illustrations on every page printed in red and black. Complete with sixteen tipped-in colour plates (a few with minor creases). Colophon states "The letterpress and fine illustrations lithographed by Vincent Brooks, Day and Sons Ltd. London., the four-colour plates by Henry Stone and Son Ltd. Banbury. A.D. MCMXI". Light blue bookseller's label from Weatherhead s of Aylesbury on front paste-down endpaper. Pages are clean, but stitching just visible where book has been over-opened. 20 x 29 cm. Bound in original publisher's full, limp, chocolate brown, suede binding. Spine with gilt lettering and vignette design (worn at top of spine, with short closed tear down top of upper hinge). Front cover with ART NOUVEAU gilt vignette of three figures, four birds on the wing in circular borders and the title lettering within scrolling floreate border. Both upper corners slightly worn. Preserved in vintage buff cardboard slipcase. Illustrated by Willy Pogany (1882-1955), a Hungarian and a prolific & highly sought-after illustrator of children's and other books. Pogany credits his publisher, Harrap, with giving him his "first big chance." His second book for Harrap, an earlier version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, printed in 1909, established his reputation as a book illustrator. The variant limp suede binding is hugely less common than the publisher's leather or cloth editions, and the few copies that were produced seldom survive due to their innate fragility. Bookseller Inventory # 4461