BLACK BEAUTY.

First edition with these illustrations, first printing. Signed by the artist. Original green cloth with gilt titles to the spine and upper board and a gilt relief illustration of two horses to the upper board. Top edge gilt. Gilt illustrated endpapers. With thirty tipped in colour plates and black and white line drawings by Lucy Kemp-Welch throughout. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, with some rubbing to the spine tips and raised parts of the gilt illustration on the upper board, the corners lightly bumped. There is some exposed webbing to the inner hinge at the rear, the binding remaining firm. The contents, with a short closed tear to the fore-edge of the leaf facing page two (the plate is unaffected), a light crease along the bottom of the plate facing page 97, and a few light finger marks here and there, are otherwise clean and without previous owners' stamps or inscriptions. A classic illustrated edition of 'Black Beauty', scarce in this form.

Issued in a limited edition of 600 copies, this example is numbered 224 and signed by Lucy Kemp-Welch in black ink on the limitation page. Kemp-Welch (1896-1958) was the foremost equestrian artist of her generation one of the best-known female artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A horsewoman herself, with a particular love of work horses, Kemp-Welch matches the sensitivity and insight of Anna Sewell's equine classic that raised an unprecedented level of awareness of horse welfare and made a lasting impact on legislature in both the UK and USA.