Washington Irving; Arthur Rackham - Rip Van Winkle - 1906

Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving

Complete collation of the 50 plates and the frontispiece.

Published in 1819 within the collection "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon," this tale recounts the story of a modest villager from the Catskill Mountains who, after sharing the drink of mysterious characters met in the forest, falls asleep and does not wake up until twenty years later, returning to a world transformed by the American Revolution. Inspired by German legends, notably that of Peter Klaus, Irving transposes this European folkloric motif into the Dutch colonial setting of New York State, giving rise to one of the very first American tales to achieve international fame and to establish itself as a foundational text of United States literature.

The illustration accompanying this edition is by Arthur Rackham, whose English version, published in London by Heinemann in 1905, constituted the first work entirely illustrated by the artist to appear as a numbered deluxe edition; the original watercolors, exhibited at the Leicester Gallery, drew the attention of J. M. Barrie, who immediately commissioned Rackham to illustrate Peter Pan. The French edition presented here, published by Hachette in Paris in 1906, reproduces identically the case binding and the illustrations of the original English edition, one year after its publication.

Washington Irving (1783–1859), born in New York, was the first American writer to win truly international recognition, pursuing, alongside a literary career, a diplomatic one that led him to the position of United States Minister to Spain. Besides Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, he left biographies of Christopher Columbus and George Washington.

Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), for his part, established himself as the most famous British illustrator of the Edwardian golden age of the illustrated book, recognizable by his pen-and-ink drawing enhanced with watercolor, combining grace and disquieting strangeness, which he deployed notably for Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Tales, and Wagner's Ring Cycle.

Paris, Hachette et Cie, 1906; first French edition; in-4, X-69 pages, followed by fifty color plates hors texte, mounted on guards, with a frontispiece. Spine dusty, signs of rubbing on the binding, which also has a few stains. The text block edge is a slightly lighter green than the edge of the plates (due to manufacturing), and the lower edge is rubbed. There is a former water stain at the top near the lateral edge of the two endpapers. Partial detachments of the title-page and the frontispiece guard mounted leaf. Spreadover foxing, mostly on the first and last pages, as well as on the guards. The plates are well preserved. No doodles or annotations. Small reading tear at the top of page 15 (2 cm).