Aesop’s Fables : Inscribed By The Illustrator

The First UK Printing published by Jonathan Cape, London in 1989. 8vo., black cloth lettered and decorated in gilt to spine with publisher's device gilt to foot; in the original unclipped illustrated wrapper (£12.95 net); printed endpapers with fallen tree design; title vignette and numerous other illustrations by John Vernon Lord throughout, including in-text, full and double page; The BOOK is a wonderful, essentially near Fine copy, just mildly pushed to the spine ends and one tiny barely discernible scratch to the upper board; the near-Fine WRAPPER just ever-so slightly toned, and creased at the spine tips. A superior example. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. With a lengthy penned inscription from the illustrator: 'To Bill & Mary [Pyke] to the front free endpaper: After a marvellous visit to Heswall - rambling among genealogy of the Wirral, ferrying across the Mersey and treading the pavements of Jordan Street, visiting sundry educational establishments in Wales and England, eating and drinking well, plus many conversations amongst the sniffing and trotting to and fro of Rocky and Misty. Lots of love… '. Also included is an envelope addressed to the recipients, with a series of 13 illustrated postcards, one written by Lord, stamped and addressed, with an extract from a Walt Whitman poem entitled Song of Myself . The card is signed ' lots of love, John (member of the Rice-Pudding clan!)'. A collection of over two hundred fables personally chosen and intricately illustrated by John Lord, and inspired by scenery from his home in Ditchling, Sussex - 'admittedly an unlikely place in which to encounter some of the animals represented'. Lord was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, and educated at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, where, amongst others, he benefited from the teachings of the modernist writer and artist Mervyn Peake, as well as the surrealist Cecil Collins. He went on to produce several illustrations for Punch and the Radio Times, before being appointed as professor of Illustration at University of Brighton. It is perhaps the illustrations featured here, however, for which he is now best known. For them, the illustrator won the V&A/W.H Smith Illustration Awards in 1990. A wonderful personal association copy. More images available on request. Ashton Rare Books welcomes direct contact.