New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1919. First edition. A Near Fine copy. Quarto (9 9/16 x 7 1/4 inches; 243 x 184 mm.). viii, 9 -78, [2, blank] pp. Three full-page color plates and ten full-page black and white drawings. Original light blue cloth, front cover pictorially stamped in black, spine lettered in black. Housed in a fleece-lined quarter green morocco over green cloth clamshell case, spine with five raised bands lettered in gilt in compartments.

Julia Ellsworth Ford’s Snickerty Nick is a fantastical children’s play in which the title character and other fantastical creatures explore the winter garden of the Selfish Giant. Ford’s rendition full fantastical creatures--including a personification of Spring--was inspired by the Oscar Wilde’s story from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) in which a lonely Giant learns about compassion and kindness from children playing in his garden. In her forward, Julia Ellsworth Ford wrote “To Arthur Rackham I tender my most sincere thanks whose magic touch, as in Peter Pan, Grimm's Faery Tales and Undine, making real all faeries and gnomes, endears all child life to grown-ups as well as to children" (Forward).

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children’s books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic—from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.

Riall, p. 136. Near Fine (Item #6379)