Busacca Gallery

Dream Days by Kenneth Graham, Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish   London/New York: John Lane, 1902.8 vol. Hardbound in olive green cloth with printed pictorial cover. Deckled paper edges and gilt ruled top edge. Illustrations with tissue guards. Many b&w illustrated devices. 227 numbered pages, printed end papers and promotional pages by publisher at end. Condition: Wear to binding and spine. Pasted down bookplate on fly page. Published by John Lane/The Bodley Head ~ 1900. Written by Kenneth Grahame, with beautiful young adult illustrations by the great Maxfield Parrish. Condition: Spine a bit dulled, top edge dusty; 1" tear to top of rear hinge, Christmas inscription from 1908 to front free end paper, a few plates with faint foxing to margins, otherwise very good or better, with bright covers. "The Golden Age," the favorite amongst Mr. Kenneth Grahame's favored books, has Maxfield Parrish's illustrations reproduced in photogravure. Published in London and New York by John Lane: The Bodley Head. The book is hardbound in pictorial dark green cloth illustrated in four-colors, with gilt titles on the front and spine, and the top edge is gilt as well. Measuring 6.5" x 8.25", there are 252 (+12) pages. The 18 b&w illustrations are on a high quality rag paper, each having its own vellum protector sheet printed with the caption, and then bound-in. The condition is Very Good, with bumping and rubbing at the corners and edges. The binding is a bit loose, but the hinges are fully intact. The page edges are deckled. Endpapers are illustrated. Otherwise, the interior pages are clean, tight, bright and complete. Comes in our mylar protective cover. The first edition, published by The Bodely Head in 1895, was not illustrated. This edition is an improved edition from the first illustrated in 1899. The Bodely Head published Dream Days in 1902 with photogravure illustrations. They were so pleased with the results they re-issued "The Golden Age" using the same technique. Nineteen full-page illustrations with caption-printed tissue. There are also twelve tailpieces, all illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. The book is a collection of childhood reminiscences told as allegory. Beautifully embossed multi-color castle scene on front cover. Title, author and illustrator on cover and spine.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_(Grahame)

"The Golden Age" is a collection of reminiscences of childhood, written by Kenneth Grahame and originally published in book form in 1895, in London by The Bodley Head, and in Chicago by Stone & Kimball. (The Prologue and six of the stories had previously appeared in the National Observer, the journal then edited by William Ernest Henley.) Widely praised upon its first appearance — Algernon Charles Swinburne, writing in the Daily Chronicle, called it "one of the few books which are well-nigh too praiseworthy for praise" — the book has come to be regarded as a classic in its genre. Typical of his culture and his era, Grahame casts his reminiscences in imagery and metaphor rooted in the culture of Ancient Greece; to the children whose impressions are recorded in the book, the adults in their lives are "Olympians," while the chapter titled "The Argonauts" refers to Perseus, Apollo, Psyche, and similar figures of Greek mythology. Grahame's reminiscences, in "The Golden Age" and in the later "Dream Days" (1898), were notable for their conception "of a world where children are locked in perpetual warfare with the adult 'Olympians' who have wholly forgotten how it feels to be young" — a theme later explored by J. M. Barrie and other authors. The original English and American editions of the book were printed without illustrations. A later edition, published in Britain and America in 1899 by The Bodley Head, featured black-and-white artwork by Maxfield Parrish — nineteen full-page illustrations and twelve tailpieces. The full-page pictures accompany the eighteen chapters of the book, plus a frontispiece.