The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales from the Old French. Retold by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1910]. First Edition. Publisher’s brick red morocco-grain cloth, titles and cherub decorations in compartments to spine gilt, elaborate foliate decoration to upper board in gilt and lower board in blind, cherub corner-pieces, top edge gilt. Light spotting to endpapers, vintage gift inscription to front free endpaper,  otherwise a nice bright copy of this beautifully produced book.

A nice bright copy of the first trade edition of one of the most sumptuous gift books of the Edwardian era, featuring the exquisite illustrations of Edmund Dulac at the height of his powers.

The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales stands as one of the great Hodder & Stoughton “gift books” of the early twentieth century . The publishers advertised it as “the most beautiful book ever published at a popular price” , and the 1,000 copies of the deluxe limited edition sold out immediately upon publication at the price of two guineas . This trade edition, offered here, brought Dulac’s artistry to a wider audience while maintaining the high production values—mounted colour plates, decorative borders, tissue guards, and gilt decoration—that distinguished the firm’s finest publications.

Edmund Dulac (1882–1953) was, alongside Arthur Rackham, the pre-eminent illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration. Born in Toulouse, he settled in London in 1904 and quickly established himself with commissions for Tales from the Arabian Knights (1907), The Tempest (1908), and The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1909).