18239 CHESSON, Nora & WAIN , Louis :
WITH LOUIS WAIN TO FAIRYLAND.
Raphael Tuck, London, n.d.[1905].
Book Details
Publishers by Appointment to Their Majesties The King and Queen Alexandra. Folio. Pictorial paper over cloth boards. Several areas rubbed on spine with two small holes. Boards rubbed at extremities. Back board illustration of Babes in the Wood..pp.46. 12 glorious full page illustrations in colour.
Typically Wain has cats dressed as the characters, the Forty Thieves, Jack the Giant Killer, Robinson Crusoe, Bluebeard, Robin Hood, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Aladdin, Babes in the Wood, Sinbad the Sailor, Jack and the Beanstalk , Sleeping Beauty & Beauty and the Beast.
There are numerous line drawings in b/w in the text.A small piece of the back free endpaper is torn with a missing piece.A little damage to edges of the pages and pages uniformly browned.General wear and fingermarks.Generally a Very good copy of this lovely book.
About Louis Wain
Louis Wain was born in the Clerkenwell district in London and became an artist, selling his sketches of dog shows to the Illustrated Sporting News. He married his youngest sister’s governess, Emily Richardson, which caused quite a scandal. Unfortunately, his wife fell ill with breast cancer and died three years later.
To entertain her on her sickbed, Louis Wain started drawing their cat, Peter. Emily encouraged him to send these drawings to newspapers and magazines, and soon the Louis Wain cat was a household name, not only in Britain but also in America, where his comics and drawings of cats appeared in several newspapers.
Louis Wain was elected as President of the National Cat Club and wrote the book ‘In Animal Land with Louis Wain’ in 1904.After the First World War, the public’s interest in cats diminished, and Wain reached a personal crisis, falling into poverty and being affected by schizophrenia when he was 57 years old. In 1924, he was certified insane and admitted to the pauper’s wing of a mental hospital in Tooting.
Years later, he was recognized and a fund was set up for him (by prominents such as H.G. Wells), enabling Louis Wain to spent his last years, until his death in 1939, in comfortable asylums in Southwark and Napsbury, where he continued to draw and paint cats. lambiek