Dish of Apples, A.

London & New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1921. Amongst "Rackham's Best Book Illustrations"
In the Scarce Dust Jacket

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. PHILLPOTTS, Eden. A Dish of Apples. With Illustrations by Arthur Rackham. London & New York: Hodder & Stoughton, [1921].

First trade edition. Octavo (6 1/2 x 8 1/4 in; 205 x 170 mm). 75, (3) pp. Illustrated with three full-page mounted illustrations in color with tissue guards and twenty-three drawings in black and white.

Publisher's original rose-gray cloth pictorially stamped in brown. Gray pictorial end papers. Former owners bookplate on front paste-down. (truncated) A very good copy. Original pictorial dust jacket reproducing in three colors the design on the front cover. Top of spine and small piece chipped away from top panel of jacket with loss of the "A" and the "D" in A Dish of Apples.

In his chapter "Rackham's Best Book Illustrations 2," Getttings discusses work found within this book as reflective of the artist's maturity and confidence, Rackham's pictures "tending to be less coloured drawings…[and] gradually becoming more and more like paintings" (Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p.139).

"The appearance of Eden Phillpotts' A Dish of Apples brought a characteristically appreciative letter from its author to the artist: 'I am immensely pleased at the charm & originality of your most attractive drawings. The humor of them especially drew me.' Rackham was achieving a new harmony of colour, his drawings for A Dish of Apples, to quote an American admirer Martin Birnbaum, being 'light and sparkling with a passionate rose, glowing greens and primrose yellow'' (Hudson, Arthur Rackham His Life and Work, pp. 118-119.

Latimore and Haskell, p. 54. Riall, p. 144. Gettings, p. 179. Hudson, p. 170. (Inventory #: 03537)