The Queen of Dolls
(London and New York): (Sockl & Nathan), [1889]. Single volume, measuring 7 x 5.75 inches: [20]. Original color pictorial boards, blue cloth spine, original pictorial dust jacket. Tinted frontispiece and vignettes throughout text, two chromolithographed plates, two sepia plates. Endpapers discolored from binding glue, some chipping and mild toning to jacket.
First edition of Frederick Langbridge’s richly illustrated parable, in the original dust jacket. The story follows the moral awakening of Kate, a fortunate young girl who impulsively presses her favorite doll into the arms of a beggar child: “‘Twere foppery, fraud and folly -- / If I tried to express / The face and the dress, / And the numberless charms of dolly.” The highly finished illustrations were printed for English publisher Sockl & Nathan in Nuremberg, the European center of fine color printing, home to Ernest Nister, Schaller & Kirn, and other nineteenth-century masters of lithography. British chaplain Langbridge authored a number of stories for children, in addition to books of poetry. OCLC locates three holdings of The Queen of Dolls (Bryn Mawr, Huntington, University of Limerick), though none mention the fragile Victorian dust jacket present here. A near-fine copy of an uncommon picture book.
Price: $400.00