In Fairyland. A Series Of Pictures From The Elf-World. With A Poem By William Allingham. Doyle, Richard.

First edition of the influential illustrator's magnum opus. Doyle "was given a completely free hand in producing his most imaginative pictures. for this glorious folio in decorated green cloth. The whole volume, which shows Doyle's secret fairy world at its most enchanting, is one of the finest examples of Victorian book production" (Dalby, p. 12). Collectively, the Doyle family, including Arthur Conan Doyle, exerted a great influence on the public's imagination of fairies. Richard Doyle (1824-1883), the humorist whose front cover design for Punch was in use for over a century, was also a children's illustrator who produced a number of highly popular works on fairies and fantasy. He was the favourite uncle of Arthur Conan Doyle, who grew up with the fairy drawings of his uncle and father. Conan Doyle's coinciding interests in fairies and spiritualism led him to defend the infamous Cottingley Fairies photographs as proof that fairies are real creatures who walk among us. The illustrations include folkloric captions to the scenes and are interleaved with fairy verses by the Irish poet William Allingham. The plates are by the colour printer Edmund Evans (1826-1905), who was "the key figure to whom the trio of great illustrators of the end of the century, Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott, owed recognition, encouragement, and brilliant colour reproduction" (Watson, p. 358). Richard Dalby, The Golden Age of Children's Book Illustration, 1991; Victor Watson, The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English, 2001. Folio (378 x 268 mm). Original green cloth, rebacked with original spine laid down, gilt vine-and-fairy decorations running along spine in gilt, front cover with rustic lettering, fairy devices, and two gilt rules, renewed yellow endpapers, edges gilt. Colour frontispiece and 15 colour plates printed by Edmund Evans after Richard Doyle's drawings. Title page with wood-engraved rustic lettering. Gilt and cloth bright, a little rubbing and edge wear, light foxing and tide marks within, mostly limited to margins, faint offsetting from plates, tape reinforcement at gutter. A very good copy.