The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table - Alfred W. Pollard, Arthur Rackham (illustrator) 1917 - Macmillan and Co., London - First Edition with Rackham&rsquo ‘The story of King Arthur and his Knights is one of the greatest that men have ever made...’

An exemplary copy of this celebrated collection of Arthurian legends, wonderfully embellished with Arthur Rackham’s dramatic illustrations, with 16 full page colour plates, including frontispiece, each one with descriptive tissue guards, together with several other full page and in-text black and white illustrations throughout.

Abridged from Malory’s
Morte D’Arthur by Alfred W. Pollard.
  Alfred W. Pollard (1859-1944) was an English bibliographer. Educated at London’s King’s College, and at Oxford, he joined the staff at the British Museum in 1883 in the department of printed books. He wrote widely on a range of subjects in English literature and is best remembered for his scholarly writing on Shakespearean texts.

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), English illustrator and water-colourist. One of the foremost and most productive of the Edwardian illustrators, with a preference for illustrating books of a mystical, magic or legendary background. Aided by advances in colour printing at the beginning of the 20th century, his imaginative eye saw all forms with the eyes of childhood and created a world that was half reassuring and half frightening, whilst adding a delightfully humorous flourish to many of his illustrations, although he can descend into darker depths as seen for Wagner and Edgar Allen Poe.

References: House,
Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists 424. Murphy, A Selected Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred W. Pollard 1938.

Large octavo, pp. xxiv 509 [1].
  Recently bound in half navy morocco over blue cloth, lettering and decorative motifs in gilt to spine, original blue cloth cover and spine bound in at rear.   Condition: Fine in fine binding.   Ref: 107661   Price: HK$ 5,500