Imagina

New York: Duffield & Company, 1914. With Two Full-Page Color Plates by Arthur Rackham

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. FORD, Julia Ellsworth. Imagina. With Illustrations by Arthur Rackham and Lauren Ford. New York: Duffield & Company, 1914.

First edition. Quarto (9 1/2 x 7 5/16 inches; x 242 x 185 mm.). [12], 178, [1], [1, blank] pp. Two color plates by Arthur Rackham (including frontispiece) and numerous black and white drawings in the text by Lauren Ford. Pages 171/172 with lower corner crease, pages 173-176 with neat repairs on upper blank margin.

Publisher's light blue cloth pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt on front cover and lettered in gilt on spine. Pictorial end-papers in pale blue and white by Lauren Ford. Extremities of binding a little faded, some slight wear to top and and bottom of spine and corners. A good copy of the scarce first edition.

A wee young, motherless boy, a dreamer who secretly loves poetry, yearns to be held and loved by the beautiful woman he has conjured in his mind in the dim moonlight - Imagina - and communes with trees, birds, flowers, and his dog, Kit, all of whom understand and accept him as he is rather than how his no-nonsense guardian would prefer him to be.

"Julia Ellsworth Ford was a New York socialite, art collector and patron, and author of children's books. She was married to Simeon Ford, a financier and co-owner of the Grand Union Hotel in New York. Ford presided over a salon that included the Lebanese mystic Kahlil Gibran, Irish poet W. B. Yeats, and American dancer Isadora Duncan. Her published works include: Simeon Solomon: An Appreciation (1908), Imagina (1914), and Snickerty Nick (1919), among others" (Yale University, Julia Ellsworth Ford papers).

Riall, p. 123. See Latimore and Haskell, p. 42.