The Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth & Marvels

Large 8vo. Hardcover. Gray-brown cloth with “monks” cover vignette in deep brown and cover title gilt; spine lettering gilt and spine ornamentation and vignette in deep brown. xix + 549 pp. 36 coloured drawings and colourplates, plus 66 textual illustrations, head- and tailpieces and full-page drawings by Arthur Rackham. The colourplates are tipped in on special card stock paper, each with tissue guard. Spine tips nicked & rubbed; small stain to rear cover; patch of rubbing to front cover, not materially affecting vignette or print; corners bumped; binding cracked but firm, and one leaf (pp. 161-62) edge-worn with missing top corner, not affecting page-numbering or text; still a nice, tight copy with clean interior and very bright plates & illustrations. Rackham first illustrated the Ingoldsby Legends in 1898, then came out with a second, reworked edition in 1907. Our copy is the 4th printing of the 1907 ed (stated). For it, Rackham added a frontispiece and an illustration (facing p. 508), coloured several others or reworked them, and replaced a number of them with new ones. He also reworked many of the pen drawings. (See Prefatroy Note by the Illustrator, p. v.)