FABLES

London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914. LIMITED LARGE PAPER DE LUXE ISSUE of the first edition thus, one of only 105 copies, in the publisher's best binding. Illustrated with 20 black and white plates in Aestheticism style reminiscent of Beardsley by E. R. Herman, each paste down to stiff stock and bound in with stubs as issued and with a captioned tissue guard as issued. Tall 4to, in the publisher's very best deluxe binding of full flexible vellum gilt lettered on the upper cover and spine, t.e.g. 83pp. A fine and bright copy, with just an occasional bit of age spotting here and there never affecting the images, and only every once in a while the sheets. An unusually well preserved copy. VERY SCARCE, ONE OF ONLY 105 OF THE LIMITED LARGE PAPER EDITION IN THE PUBLISHER'S BEST DELUXE VELLUM BINDING. Even the trade first edition is difficult to find. Herman has provided twenty fine illustrations, one each for the twenty fables by Robert Louis Stevenson. The book was printed at the Chiswick Press in a very small number. Stevenson's morality tales are short and strange, and often quite loaded with cynicism. Stevenson had a long-standing fascination with the fable as a literary form. These twenty stories were first collected in 1898 but are here presented for the first time with Herman's dramatic images.