< Back

Greenaway, Kate; Evans, Edmund (sculpt.).
Kate Greenaway's Book of Games.
Publisher: George Routledge & Sons, London;
Date of Publication: 1889
Stock Code: 15195
First edition. Quarto, pp., 63, [1], plus 24 full-colour chromoxylographic plates, as called for. Publisher’s original blue cloth; titled in gilt to upper board; vignettes after drawings by Greenaway stamped in black and hand-coloured in yellow, orange, and green to upper board; original canary-yellow end-papers. Contemporary bookseller’s ticket of ‘W. Mullan & Sons’ of Belfast to front paste-down. Spine-tips softened and a little rubbed; slight shelf-wear to corners; minor rubbing to hinges. First gathering cracked but holding well; a few spots of light foxing to final text pages. An excellent copy, scarcely found in this condition. A superb copy of Greenaway’s charming illustrated book of playground and parlour games. Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) was a prolific and influential watercolourist and illustrator of children’s books. She was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in 1889, the year this book was published. Edmund Evans (1826-1905) was a pioneer in colour printing. He encouraged Greenaway to publish her first book, Under the Window (1879), and he would become her sole engraver for the rest of her career. Evans typically photographed Greenaway’s drawings directly on to the wooden block, engraved in facsimile, and then introduced stippling, grain, and matrices to produce texture (on full display in this book), before colouring with blocks of red, blue, yellow, and flesh tone. The effect was a rich and bright series of colour illustrations that added depth to Greenaway’s drawings. £250.00