AbeBooks: Most Expensive Book List 2008

Here's another item I'm clearing from my archives as you can guess from the date! This past January AbeBooks shared a list of AbeBooks' Most Expensive Sales in 2008.

For SurLaLune, #8 was the most interesting, a copy of Grimms Fairy Tales by Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm sold for $11,388. "A first edition, first issue copy of these famous fairy tales, including 22 etched plates by George Cruikshank. It is housed in a clamshell box." Alas, no pictures were offered--the one provided is actually a volume illustrated by Arthur Rackham instead. However, the wonders of the internet provide the opportunity to see Cruikshank's illustrations for the low price of your time and internet access. I have posted many of his illustrations in the SurLaLune Illustration Gallery at George Cruikshank. These are older scans, some of the first I made for SurLaLune from a later edition of Cruikshank's work.

Of course, Cruikshank was not a romantic and his style is not as popular as Rackham and the other Golden Age illustrators, but he was influential and popular. He was chosen to illustrate the first English translation of the Grimms' work and his drawings are insightful and humorous and had much less to draw from for inspiration since he was one of the first to illustrate the tales.