The Vicar of Wakefield. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: Harrap, 1929. First Edition. Small Folio. A good clean copy in cloth covers with gilt title and design to front cover.

With Twelve coloured plates by Arthur Rackham. There was also a limited signed edition issued in the same year.

First published in two volumes 1766, The Vicar of Wakefield  became one of the most widely read novels in the eighteenth century.

“The irresistible charm this novel possesses, evinces how much may be done without the aid of extravagant incident to excite the imagination and interest the feelings. Few productions of the kind afford greater amusement in the perusal, and still fewer inculcate more impressive lessons of morality.”  (Washington Irving)

Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield has enjoyed countless editions since its first publication in 1766, but the 1929 Harrap edition—illustrated by Arthur Rackham—is one of the most desirable twentieth‑century interpretations of the novel. It represents a late but confident moment in Rackham’s career, produced when his style had fully matured into the atmospheric, delicate, and slightly whimsical mode that made him one of the great illustrators of the Golden Age of British book illustration.