Author: NIELSEN, Kay; Fortescue-Brickdale, Eleanor
Title: Bookman [Special] Christmas Number 1925, the
Description: London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925. “The Bookman Special Christmas Number 1925,” with “The Bookman Portfolio” Containing Three Color Plates by Kay Nielsen [NIELSEN, Kay, contributor]. The Bookman. [Special] Christmas Number 1925. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925. First edition. Large quarto (13 3/16 x 8 3/4 inches; 335 x 222 mm.). xxiv, [12, publisher’s advertisements on yellow paper], [2, publisher’s advertisements on blue paper], [3], 144-196, [2, publisher’s advertisement], 208 (“Supplement to The Bookman Christmas 1925”), xxv-xxxiv [publisher’s advertisements] pp. Six mounted color plates (including frontispiece) by Charles Robinson, Lionel Edwards, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, Kitty Shannon, and Winifred Brunton, numerous additional color and black and white plates by E.H. Shepard, Willebeek Le Mair, Mead Schaeffer, E.O. Hoppé, Donald Maxwell, and others. Text illustrations. Original cream-colored wrappers printed in green with mounted color plate on front wrapper. A near fine copy. Loosely laid in is “The Bookman Portfolio containing plates in colour by Kay Nielsen illustrating Hansel and Gretel and other stories by the brothers Grimm” with three color plates (“Catskin,” “Rosebud,” and “Rumpelstiltskin”) mounted on heavy black stock with captions printed in gold. The Bookman (1891–1934) “was founded by William Robertson Nicoll (1851–1923), editor of the British Weekly-It was conceived to popularize literature by offering a monthly read at 6d. a time to people with limited finance. As a journal for ‘Book buyers, Book readers, and Book sellers’, the Bookman combined reviews with short items of news about book people and essays on general literary subjects, as well as many illustrations. There were also special issues on particular authors. It was highly successful in commercial terms, and a useful source of income to writers as diverse as W. B. Yeats (1865–1939), A.E.W. Mason, Walter Pater (1839–94), J.M. Barrie, Edward Thomas (1878–1917) and Arthur Ransome (1884–1967). If, between the wars, the Bookman was eventually unable to compete for readers with newspapers and radio, it had successfully established a definition of literary interest as that which combines an equal concern for past and present authors, for ‘high’ and ‘low’ fiction, and for a literary knowledge that included news about publishers and booksellers as well as about authors” (The Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction). .

Keywords: Fortescue-Brickdale, Eleanor Art Christmas Illustrated Books Illustrated Books Christmas Literature


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