Grimm's Fairy Tales
illustrated by Arthur Rackham is a new release from Calla Editions (part of Dover). This is a reproduction of the original 1909 release by Rackham and a great, inexpensive way to own a beautiful collection of Rackham's work with the tales. It has an October release date but is already shipping from Amazon. Dover rarely has firm pub dates and they are usually bumped later than earlier, so I am happy this one is earlier.
I haven't seen this edition in person yet--I own a few Rackham books and still want this one, for one it will smell new--but I have some of the Calla releases from last year and they are all satisfying. Yes, I have had the privilege of seeing and handling many of the first editions of these volumes. They are not up to that standard but they are better than most of the other reproductions I have seen produced during the decades since, so you can either spend thousands on a first edition or settle for one of these. And so many of those first editions are missing illustration plates, too. That always makes me sad.
And, really, Arthur Rackham is rather the Beatles of illustrators--his influence is visible in the work of so many illustrators a century later.
And here's some of the other Calla Editions that may interest the readers here:
Stories from Hans Christian Andersen (Calla Editions) illustrated by Edmund Dulac
East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North (Calla Editions)
illustrated by Kay Nielsen
illustrated by Kay Nielsen
The Arabian Nights illustrated by Rene Bull
Edited to make corrections and additions based on Jeff's comments, HAH. Thanks, Jeff!
Heidi and All-
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of news on the Calla front— The Grimm's Tales you mention here is available now, slightly abridged from the original, but with all 40 of Rackham's color plates. Also released in this group— The Arabian Nights, with outstanding images by René Bull, Kipling's The Jungle Book with illustrations by the Brothers' Detmold, and An edition of Hamlet, with illustrations by John Austen.
Calla has also produced a more modern tale, out of print for some time, "A Kingdom Far and Clear: The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy" by Mark Halprin with illustration by Chris van Allburg. The illustrations in the edition were all reshot from the original art, under van Allsburg's guidance, and with an additional original plate not previously available in earlier editions.
We look forward to your comments on the whole lot. One other note regarding the above comments- The Aladdin you mention has been withdrawn from our list, at least for now. It has never been printed as a Calla, and was illustrated by Thomas Mackenzie.
Please let us know what you think when you see them.
Jeff A. Menges
Oooh. Thanks for that. I shall definitely have to grab a copy. xx
ReplyDeleteThanks from me too! It's now in my amazon shopping basked.
ReplyDelete