IRVING, Washington.
Old Christmas: From the Sketchbook of Washington Irving
London: Macmillan & Co., 1876
Bracebridge Hall
London: Macmillan & Co., 1877
First editions thus with the Caldecott illustrations. Two crown octavo volumes uniformly bound (overall 18.5 x 13 cm). Profusely illustrated with full page illustrations, headpieces, tailpieces and text vignettes by Randolph Caldecott, wood-engraved by James D. Cooper. Full brown morocco by Zaehnsdorf (its gilt stamps on front and rear dentelles), spines in six compartments with raised bands, gilt lettering in second and third compartments, small gilt flower-pot tool in other compartments and in corners of all covers, double gilt rules to cover edges, elaborately gilt-tooled dentelles, green endpapers, all edges gilt. Original gilt-lettered and decorated green cloth spines and front covers laid in at rear of each volume. Collates (Old Christmas) [3 ll.], 1 l. (half-title and publisher’s device), 1 l. (frontispiece), 1 l. (tinted engraved title, engraved vignette verso), pp. [v]-xiv, 1 l. (fly-title and illustration), 159 pp., [1 p.], pp. 161-5 (Notes), 1 p. (printer’s credit), [1 l.], original spine and front cover laid in, [3 ll.], plus 7 ll. tinted illustrations printed one side only; (Bracebridge Hall) [4 ll.], 1 l. (half-title and publisher’s device), 1 l. (frontispiece), 1 l. (tinted engraved title), pp. [v]-xiv, 284 pp., 4 pp. advertisements, original spine and front cover laid in, [3 ll.], plus 7 ll. illustrations printed one side only. Shallow scratches on front cover of Old Christmas, slight bumping to some corners, slight wear on joints, bands, corners and edges, negligible scattered foxing and other small faults, otherwise a fine set, marked “Perfect” in pencil by a former compiler.
Caldecott’s charming illustrations for Old Christmas, continued in its sequel Bracebridge Hall, caused Irving’s English Christmas-tide pair to be mentioned in the league of Dickens’s Christmas Carol. They gained Caldecott the commissions of impresario printer Edmund Evans to succeed Walter Crane and illustrate The House that Jack Built and The Diverting History of John Gilpin, published in 1878. From there, in the remainder of his short life, he gained the friendship, recognition and admiration of a wide circle of his literary and artistic contemporaries.
References: Ray English pp. 154-5; Book Collector No. 271, “The Great Illustrators.”
Provenance: James McCrea (armorial bookplates on each front pastedown).
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Price: $500
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