Warwick Goble (ill) - Stories from the Pentamerone - 1911

"Stories from the Pentamerone" by Giambattista Basile and illustrated by Warwick Goble

Macmillan, london - 1911 first UK edition - 32 colored plates by Warwick Goble - 303p, 25cmx20cm - condition: very good, all plates present incl frontispiece, in original publisher's binding. A fresh and excellent collectible copy.

The collection of Italian folk-tales by Giambattista Basile, Conte di Torrone, 1566-1632, (who is believed to have collected them chiefly in Crete and Venice) was originally called Lo Cunti de li Cunto (The Story of Stories, 1634) but became known as Il Pentamerone by 1674 and comprised fifty tales over five nights. Published posthumously in Naples with a Neapolitan dialect that kept it out of northern European tradition for two centuries, it eventually influenced the form of fairy-tale writing in Europe, in particular those of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. This edition features 32 of the tales in a translation by John Edward Taylor published in 1847.

. Goble was strongly influenced by Japanese art and by Chinese paintings, his color washes are extremely subtle and stroked on with the brush, his compositions consciously oriental, He worked almost entirely for publishers like Messrs. Black and Messrs Macmillan who were specializing in color plate books