DULAC, Edmund (illus.); ANDERSEN, Hans.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Stories from Hans Andersen. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the artist on the title page, "To Madame Alfred du Cros, with all best wishes from Edmund Dulac, 1911", together with a fine ink drawing of the head of the emperor from "The Nightingale".The likely recipient is Louise du Cros (1865-1927), the American wife of Jacques Alfred du Cros (1868-1946). He was a director of the Dunlop Rubber Company. In 1911 they lived in the Kensington area of London. Louise Pemberton married Edgar Hincks in 1885, and she married again in 1901. She is known to have corresponded with the family of Mark Twain.A review of the illustrated books of 1911 published in Art and Literature (December 1911) found one reviewer stating "in certain qualities of fantasy and delicate strength, and lurid, imaginative daring, Mr Rackham and Mr Pogany are... inimitable, but for sheer grace and poetry of feeling I am inclined to give the palm to Mr Edmund Dulac. I doubt if Mr Dulac has ever done better work as a book-illustrator than he has put into the series of colour-plates with which he has illustrated Hans Andersen...".The reviewer in the Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art (10 December 1911) stated simply that this was "a really beautiful book, with illustrations of exceptional merit. As pictures for children nothing could be more attractive than Mr Dulac's watercolour drawings".

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