East of the Sun and West of the Moon; Old Tales from the North
New York: George H Doran Company, (1922). First American Edition. 8vo, 9 x 6 1/2 inches (230 x 160 mm); 204 pp. 25 tipped-in color plates, including the frontispiece; illustrations in black and white throughout, all done by Kay Nielsen. Pages clean and unmarked with very slight toning to page edges. Original mustard-colored cloth with red stamped titling to cover and spine; spine is toned and covers lightly soiled but not rubbed. Orange illustrated endpapers. No dust jacket.
Pictorial bookplate of Joan Elisabeth Ehrman pasted inside front cover; bookseller label from Whyckoff and Gelber, San Francisco on inside back cover.
Collection of 15 stories of Norse folklore originally written by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812 – 1885), Jørgen Engebretsen Moe (1813 – 1882), Sir George Webbe Dasent (1817 – 1896) and others.
This edition containing magnificent illustrations by Kay Nielsen (1886 – 1957), a Danish illustrator who was part of the Golden Age of Illustration and who also collaborated with Disney, contributing story sketches and illustrations for several films, including for Fantasia. The Preface states "Nielsen's exquisite bizarrerie of his drawings aptly expresses the innermost significance of the old-world, old-wives' fables. For to term these legends, Nursery Tales, would be to curtail them, by nine-tenths, of their interest. They are the romances of the childhood of Nations: they are the never-failing springs of sentiment, of sensation, of heroic example, from which primeval peoples drank their fill at will."
Condition: Near fine.
Item number: 546
Price: $575.00
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