HANSEL AND GRETEL: And Other Stories by The Brothers Grimm.

Deluxe, limited, numbered edition. Bound in full white buckram, blocked in gold foil and screen printed in turquoise to the front panel and spine. Top edge gilt. Typeset in Caslon on Caxton Wove Paper, with twelve colour illustrations printed on Arctic coated paper tipped on to text pages. Endpapers patterned with a design by Kay Neilsen in gold and orange. Additional sixteen-page thread-sewn commentary booklet printed on Abbey Wove paper with an essay by Marina Warner ('Dreams of Enchantment: Kay Neilsen's Illustrations to Hansel and Gretel and Other Stories'). Book and booklet bound by Lachenmaier, Reutlingen, and printed by Memminger, Memmingen. Housed in a solander presentation box in full turquoise buckram, blocked in gilt to front and spine and lined with gilt paper including a pocket for the commentary booklet. An exquisitely beautiful edition.

Limited and hand-numbered edition of 980 copies (and 20 lettered copies hors de commerce), this copy is no. 128. The text follows the original edition with these illustrations published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1825. As Marina Warner explains in the illuminating essay written for this edition, "the translator and the selection aren't identified, but some of the stories appear to be taken directly from Edgar Taylor's 1823 volumes, and others from an anthology, published in 1853, called 'Household Stories', [...] anonymously translated." Kay Neilsen (1886-1957) came to prominence at the end of a period of great illustrators (including Rackham and Dulac), and though his work shows traces of their influence, there is a sharper, more disturbing edge. He later worked for Walt Disney studios where he contributed to the great 'Fantasia' (1940). "There is no more beautiful book than Kay Neilsen's 'Hansel and Gretel', pale symbols melting into paler backgrounds; planes of action, successive stages of one idea bordering on expressionism." (from a 1926 review in 'The Outlook')