Original dust jacket (with colour onlay), publisher’s textured green cloth with gilt lettering and decorations to upper board and spine, colour onlay to upper board, top edges green, 8 colour plates, 7 line drawings (chapter headpieces), decorative title page, 128 pages, 18.1 x 13.1 cm. With publisher’s double-sided promotional slip laid in (17.4 x 12.3 cm). First edition, 1913 (undated). In the series ‘Tales for Children from Many Lands’, edited by F.C. Tilney. First edition – in the ‘Tales for Children’ format – of this collection of old English fairy tales retold by Ernest and Grace Rhys, in the publisher’s lavishly gilt-decorated binding. Seven of the eight colour plates, and all but one of the line drawings, are by Herbert Cole (1867-1930). The two ‘Jack the Giant-Killer’ illustrations (and generic title-page design) are by Robert Anning-Bell (1863-1933). Note that the Herbert Cole images first appeared in the children’s title ‘Fairy-Gold: 
A Book of Old English Fairy Tales’ (1906), those by Anning-Bell in ‘Jack the Giant-Killer & Beauty and the Beast‘ (1894) – one of the two Anning-Bell drawings being specially colorized for this edition. The generic title-page design, used across the series, incorporates a decorative border plus small line drawing from the Anning-Bell edition of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (1895). The book comes complete with the rare original dust jacket, together with a slip from the publisher announcing various new children’s titles – all exceptionally well preserved for age. Note that while the book appears to be a 1913 first edition (with no further printings noted), both the jacket and slip would seem to be of later date, probably 1919, based on the titles advertised, and on a small date to the foot of the slip. Contents include: Jack the Giant-Killer, The History of Tom Thumb, The Imp Tree, The Three Bears, “Tom Tit Tot”, The Lambton Worm, The Fairy Horn, The Pixy Flower, Tom Hickathrift, The Black Bull of Norroway, The Green Knight, Robin Goodfellow, The Princess of Colchester, Lazy Jack, The Giant of Saint Michael’s, Jack and the Bean-stalk, Dick Whittington and His Cat. With Introduction by Ernest Rhys. Condition: Contents crisp and bright, very clean. Endpapers plus first and last page with usual offsetting, front pastedown with small bookplate/ex libris of Ilse Schneider. Binding slightly loose. Boards and spine clean and bright as shown (well protected by jacket), with a little bumping to extremities; upper board with a few small glue smudges plus a little scuffing to edges of plate (original production flaws). Unclipped dust jacket as shown, with small chips to corners, a few short closed tears, plus creasing to upper and lower edges. Publisher’s slip very clean.