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Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
The Ingoldsby Legends (1907) is an illustrated book based on the 19th Century collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry prepared by Richard Harris Barham (under the pseudonym of Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor). The tales were first published by Richard Bentley and the Prefaces to the 1st and 2nd Series - by Ingoldsby (that is, Barham) continued to provide interesting reading.
For The Ingoldsby Legends (1907), Arthur Rackham revised and adapted his illustrations to the Edition first published in 1898. His 'Prefatory Note' to the 1907 provides an outline of task, thus:
In 1898 Messrs. Dent and Co. first published the "Ingoldsby Legends" with about one hundred illustrations of mine. This book has met with a very satisfactory reception, but the publishers have felt with me that, with the addition of some new drawings, a careful overhauling would make it worthy of publication in a more important form, in which greater prominence could be given to the illustrations by better and larger reproductions, including a greater number of illustrations in colour.
To this end the following has been done:
Following that revision, the suite of illustrations published in the 1907 Edition included 24 full colour plates, a further 12 tinted illustrations and more than 60 monotone images.
The 'Publisher's Note' provides further insight into the revision process thus:
It has been the desire of the Publishers to here present the "Ingoldsby Legends" in something like an "Edition Définitive de Luxe."
It has been carefully read with the edtiona finally corrected by the Author, and has been re-set in a fine type, while Mr. Arthur Rackham, in his hundred illustrations, has entered heartily into the wild humour and phantasy of this favourite old classic.
The coloured pictures, which owe so much to their delicacy of tint and fine line drawing, have all been reproduced by the Graphic Photo Engraving Co. in the latest and highest development of the three-colour work, and the Publishers owe them thanks for their great care in copying these originals and for their adequate and admirable results. The colour printing has been done by Messrs. McFarlane and Erskine of Edinburgh, and the text by the Ballantyne Press of London, to whom also the Publishers wish to acknowledge their obligations.
Our Greeting Cards and Reproduction Images
When presented on Greeting Cards, these images are prepared as tipped-in plates - in hommage to the hand-crafted approach typical of prestige illustrated publications produced in the early decades of the 20th Century. Each card is hand-finished and and the images are presented on Ivory card stock with an accompanying envelope. The rear of each card carries information about Arthur Rackham, this wonderful suite and the profiled illustration - we have left the interior of the cards blank so that you may write your own personal message.
Should you wish to order a Reproduction Print of one or more of these images, we have provided some options below. Each of these large format prints is also accompanied by information about Arthur Rackham, this suite and the profiled illustration.
To purchase, simply click on the appropriate "Add to Cart" button and you will be taken through to our Shopping Cart secured through PayPal. Multiple purchases will be consolidated by that feature and shipping and handling costs to any destination in the world are accommodated by our flat-rate fee of US$20 for every US$200 worth of purchases.
Of course, should you wish to discuss some customised options, we welcome your contact on any matter through ThePeople@SpiritoftheAges.com.
In the meantime, enjoy perusing these wonderful images from Arthur Rackham.
The colour illustrations
The Prefaces to the 1st and 2nd Series of Ingoldsby Legends
Preface to the 1st Series
You wish me to collect into one single volume certain rambling extracts from our family memoranda, many of which have already appeared in the pages of your Miscellany. At the same time you tell me that doubts are entertained in certain quarters as to the authenticity of their details.
Now with respect to their genuineness, the old oak chest, in which the originals are deposited, is not more familiar to my eyes than it is to your own; and if its contents have any value at all, it consists in the strict veracity of the facts they record.
To convince the most incredulous, I can only add, that should business - pleasure is out of the question - ever call them into the neighbourhood of Folkestone, let them take the high road from Canterbury to Dover till they reach the eastern extremity of Barham Downs. Here a beautiful green lane diverging abruptly to the right will carry them through the Oxenden plantations and the unpretending village of Denton, to the foot of a very respectable hill - as hills go in this part of Europe. On reaching its summit let them look straight before them - and if among the handing woods which crown the opposite side of the valley, they cannot distinguish an antiquated Manor-house of Elizabethan architecture, with its gable ends, stone stanchions, and tortuous chimneys rising above the surrounding trees, why - the sooner they procure a pair of Dollond's patent spectacles the better.
If, on the contrary, they can manage to descry it, and, proceeding some five or six furlongs through the avenue, will ring at the Lodge-gate - they cannot mistake the stone lion with the Ingoldsby escutcheon (Ermine, a saltire engrailed Gules) in his paws - they will be received with a hearty old English welcome.
The papers in question have been written by different parties, and at various periods, I have thought it advisable to reduce the more ancient of them into a comparatively modern phraseology, and to make my collateral ancestor, Father John, especially, "deliver himself like a man of this world"; Mr. Maguire, indeed, is the only Gentleman who, in his account of the late Coronation, retains his own rich vernacular.
As to the arrangement, I shall adopt the sentiment expressed by the Constable of Bourbon four centuries ago, teste Shakespeare, one which seems to become more fashionable every day:
Preface to the 2nd Series
I should have replied sooner to your letter, but that the last three days in January are, as you are aware, always dedicated, at the Hall, to an especial battue, and the old house is full of shooting-jackets, shot-belts, and "double Joes." Even the women wear percussion caps, and your favourite (?) Rover, who, you may remember, examined the calves of your legs with such suspicious curiosity at Christmas, is as pheasant-mad as if he were a biped, instead of being a genuine four-legged scion of the Blenheim breed. I have managed, however, to avail myself of a lucid interval in the general hallucination (how the raid did come down on Monday!), and as you tell me the excellent friend whom you in are in the habit of styling "A Generous and Enlightened Public" has emptied your shelves of the first edition, and "asks for more," why, I agree with you, it would be a want of respect to that very respectable personification, when furnishing him with a further supply, not to endeavour at least to amend my faults, which are few, and your own, which are more numerous. I have, therefore, gone to work con amore, supplying occasionally on my own part a deficient note, or elucidatory stanza, and on yours knocking out, without remorse, your superfluous i's, and now and then eviscerating your colon.
My duty to our illustrious friend, thus performed, I have a crow to pluck with him, - Why will he persist - as you tell me he does persist - in calling me by all sorts of names but those to which I am entitled by birth and baptism - my "Sponsorial and Patronymic appellations," as Dr. Pangloss has it? - Mrs. Malaprop complains, and with justice, of an "assault upon her parts of speech:" but to attack one's very existence - to deny that one is a person in esse, and scarcely to admit that one may be a person in posse, is tenfold cruelty; - "it is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging!" - let me entreat all such likewise to remember that, as Shakespeare beautifully expresses himself elsewhere - I give his words as quoted by a very worthy Baronet in a neighbouring county, when protesting against a defamatory placard at a general election:
* A reading which seems most unaccountably to have escaped the researches of all modern Shakespeareans, including the rival editors of the new and illustrated versions.
In order utterly t squabash and demolish every gainsayer, I had thought, at one time, of asking my old and esteemed friend, Richard Lane, to crush them at once with his magic pencil, and to transmit my features to posterity, where all his works are sure to be "delivered according to the direction;" but somehow the noble-looking profiles which he has recently executed of the Kemble family put me a little out of conceit with my own, while the undisguised amusement which my "Mephistopheles Eyebrow," as he termed it, afforded him, in the "full face," induced me to lay aside the design. Besides, my dear Sir, since, as has well been observe, "there never as a married man yet who had not somebody remarkably like him walking about town," it is a thousand to one but my lineaments might, after all, out of sheer perverseness be ascribed to anybody rather than to the real owner. I have therefore sent you, instead thereof, a very fair sketch of Tappington, taken from the Folkestone road (I tore it last night out of Julia Simpkinson's album); get Gilks to make a wood-cut of it. And now, if any miscreant (I use the word only in its primary and "Pickwickian" sense of "Unbeliever,") ventures to throw any further doubt upon the matter, why, as Jack Cade's friend says in the play, "There are the chimneys in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it!"
"Why, very well then - we hope here be truths!"
Heaven be with you, my dear Sir! - I was getting a little excited; but you, who are mild as the milk that dews the soft whisker of the new-weaned kitten, will forgive me when, wiping away the nascent moisture from my brow, I "pull in," and subscribe myself, yours quite as much as his own.
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