Mother Goose. The Old Nursery Rhymes

London: William Heinemann, 1913. First trade edition. First trade edition, later issue (with blank endpapers and no date on verso of title-page). Octavo (7 15/16 x 5 13/16 inches; 202 x 149 mm). Collating xi, [1, blank], 159, [1]. Dust jacket chipped at top and bottom of front panel and top of spine with some loss of lettering, and some old tape stains on verso. Publisher's original gray cloth, with a 'sampler' pictorially stamped in red, blue, and green with blue lettering, spine pictorially decorated and lettered in red, blue and green, top edge blue. Thirteen color plates, eighty-five black and white illustrations, many in silhouette. Title page with blue lettering and black illustration. A bright, Fine copy with just one tiny little 'nick' at the top of the spine. Complete with the original color pictorial dust jacket, correctly priced 6/- net and advertising three other 1913 Heinemann publications on back.

"So far as titles go (but not so far as artwork goes) we move into a different key with Mother Goose, a book constructed in 1913 from a series of plates and line drawings which had appeared and would reappear in St Nicholas between 1912 and 1914. The poems were chosen by Rackham, presumably in terms of the themes and subjects he wished to illustrate: this would account for the consistently good quality of the many plates and of the numerous line drawings" (Gettings 131).

Latimore and Haskell 41. Riall 115.