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Publisher’s finely ribbed red cloth with gilt lettering and decorations to spine, maroon endpapers, 5 sepia plates, sepia illustrated title page (with generic design), 382 pages

First Stanley edition. Undated, but 1931.
Number 343 in Collins’ series of Illustrated Pocket Classics.

This scarce pocket-sized edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories features five sepia plates by Sidney Stanley (1890-1956), an English artist who exhibited with the Royal Academy in 1916 and 1922, and who was apparently known for painting landscapes and murals. Among Stanley’s earliest works, and perhaps his most significant, was ‘Serbian Fairy Tales’ by E. L. Mijatovich, published in 1917, to which he contributed 16 plates (somewhat influenced by the Russian artist Ivan Bilibin). His ‘Tales Grotesque’ was the first of a trio of books for Collins published between 1931 and 1933 – all with supernatural or macabre themes.

Note that the selection of Poe stories in this edition is completely different to that in the earlier Collins title ‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination’ (number 201 in the same series, published in 1912). Note also that later printings of the Stanley edition include only the frontispiece plate.

I can see no other copy with all five plates currently for sale online.

Contents include:
The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, Morella, Metzengerstein, Von Kempelen and His Discovery, Shadow – A Parable, Silence – A Fable, A Tale of Jerusalem, The Spectacles, The Duc De L'Omelette, The Oblong Box, King Pest, Three Sundays in a Week, The Devil in the Belfry, Lionising, The Man of the Crowd, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, “Thou Art the Man”, The Sphinx, Some Words with a Mummy, Hop-Frog, Four Beasts in One, Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling, Bon-Bon, Mystification, X-ing a Paragrab, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences, The Angel of the Odd, Mellonta Tauta, The Man that was Used Up.

Condition:
Contents crisp, very clean. No owner inscriptions. Two or three pale smudges, a few foxing spots, one small corner crease, hinge after half-title slightly stretched. Top of page block dusty, with a little soiling. Binding somewhat loose, with lean. Boards and spine with discoloration and marks as shown, slight bumping and wear to extremities.

Illustrated, Literature - Quantity: 1 - Book

Edgar Allan Poe / Sidney Stanley - Tales Grotesque - 1931

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