LITTLE BROTHER & LITTLE SISTER, ILLUSTRATED AND SIGNED BY RACKHAM, WITH AN EXTRA PLATE SIGNED BY RACKHAM

(RACKHAM, Arthur). Little Brother & Little Sister and Other Tales by the Brothers Grimm. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: Constable, (1917). Quarto, original light gray cloth, white panel with gilt decorations and lettering on front cover, gilt decorated spine, pictorial endpapers, top edge gilt, uncut; original signed plate in original printed envelope. Housed together in custom half morocco slipcase. $6200.

First edition, number 21 of only 525 copies signed by Rackham, with 13 full-page color illustrations and 43 black-and-white illustrations, with the rare extra plate signed by Rackham.

Rackham's wartime collection of Grimm's fairy tales—"Snow-White and Rose-Red," "Thumbling's Travels" and "The Spirit in the Bottle," among them—does not incorporate any of the haunting, even terrifying imagery of which the artist was fully capable, "even though some of the stories are as red in tooth and claw as any of their type, and certainly would have allowed a violent interpretation. Reports coming back from the Front, eyewitness accounts of devastation, violation and butchery were quite enough to suggest to Rackham and his publishers that at this time the Allies could be spared violent images with their family reading at home… The spirit of the book is one of charm and humor" (Hamilton 109, 111). Latimore & Haskell, 46-47. Riall, 129.

Original printed envelope containing the extra plate with split along one edge, plate fine. Front inner paper hinge tender, binding sound. A near-fine and desirable signed copy.