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Irving, Washington.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York & London;
Date of Publication: 1899
Stock Code: 14637
First edition thus. Octavo, pp., v, 191, [1], with tissue-captioned photogravure frontispiece and seven further tissue-captioned full-page plates by Frederick Simpson Coburn; text-pages printed to rectos only with elaborate Art Nouveau borders printed in green and brown after designs by Margaret Armstrong; photogravure vignettes to versos. Publisher’s original textured crimson buckram, lettered and ornamented in gilt to spine and upper board; covers designed by Armstrong, with her initials to upper board; top edge gilt, other edges uncut. Very minor shelf wear to head and tail of spine and spine-tips, a few faint scuffs to boards. Contents clean, bright, and fresh. A near-fine copy. A superb Art Nouveau-style copy of one of the essential American fairy tales, designed one of the most celebrated American book designers of the fin-de-siècle. Margaret Armstrong (1867-1944) was ‘the most accomplished and productive American book designer of the 1890s and early 1900s’ (Lowell Thing ‘The Life and Art’). Her distinctive Art Nouveau style was both pioneering and highly influential, and was much imitated. An expert in botany, and book design more generally, she is best known for her artistic trade bindings produced for the American publishing industry. Her works were exhibited, both within her lifetime, and into the present day, at the Grolier Club, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress. Few designers of publishers cloth have enjoyed such celebration. The cloth on this edition of Irving’s ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ has been appraised as a ‘masterful’ design ‘amongst the finest’ of Armstrong’s bindings (Gulland and Epsey, 37). A very attractive copy. £480.00