A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales (1910)

Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish

To the left, we show a copy of A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, as illustrated by Maxfield Parrish and published by Duffield & Company (New York) in 1910.   This example retains the original blue cloth cover with applied illustrated paste-down.             On the right, we show the illustrated Title Page to this 1st Edition.

A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales (1910) is the 1st Edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tales of Greek myth and

legend that is illustrated by Maxfield Parrish.

In his Preface, Hawthorne provides an introduction to the history of the tales that, in this 1st Edition, include:

"The Gorgon's Head"; "The Golden Touch"; "The Paradise of Children"; "The Three Golden Apples"; "The Miraculous

Pitcher"; "The Chimæra"; "The Wayside"; "The Minotaur"; "The Pygmies"; "The Dragon's Teeth"; "Circe's Palace";

"The Pomegranate Seeds"; and "The Golden Fleece".

Parrish's illustrations are striking, adding his own visual interpretation to theses classic myths.

Our Greeting Cards and Reproduction Prints

We have prepared sets of 10 Greeting Cards displaying each of the major colour images from A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales (1910) and on the left, we show an example of how these Greeting Cards appear. Ordering one of those sets is as easy as selecting the "Add to Cart" feature below and following the prompts provided with 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.     Code: MP WBTT MS(10) Price: US$50.00

When presented on Greeting Cards, these images are prepared as tipped-on plates - in hommage to the hand-crafted

approach typical of prestige illustrated publications produced in the early decades of the 20th Century.

Hand-finishing is used to replicate the visual appearance of a tipped-on plate and the images are presented on

Ivory card stock (in the case of colour illustrations) or White card stock (in the case of monotone illustrations)

with an accompanying envelope. We have left the cards blank so that you may write your own personal

message.

Should you wish to order a Reproduction Print or an individual Greeting Card from this suite of images, we have

provided options below. Of course, should you require a customised preparation, we welcome your contact through

ThePeople@SpiritoftheAges.com.

In the meantime, enjoy perusing these wonderful images from Maxfield Parrish.

The colour illustrations

The Paradise of Children   Pandora	The Three Golden Apples   Atlas	The Chimæra   Bellerophon by the Fountain of Pirene	The Chimæra   The Fountain of Pirene
Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C1 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C2 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C3 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C4 12x18 Price: US$60.00
The Dragon's Teeth   Cadmus Sowing the Dragon's Teeth	Circe's Palace   Circe's Palace	The Pomegranate Seeds   Proserpina	The Golden Fleece   Jason and the Talking Oak   (Frontispiece)
Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C5 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C6 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C7 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C8 12x18 Price: US$60.00
The Golden Fleece   Jason and his Teacher	The Golden Fleece   The Argonauts in Quest of the Golden Fleece
Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C9 12x18 Price: US$60.00	Reproduction on 12x18" sheet Code: MP WBTT C10 12x18 Price: US$60.00

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Hawthorne's Preface to A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales

The author has long been of the opinion that many of the classical myths were capable of being rendered into very capital

reading for children. In the little volume here offered to the public, he has worked up half a dozen of them, with this end

in view. A great freedom of treatment was necessary to this plan; but it will be observed by every one who attempts to

render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that they are marvellously independent of all temporary modes

and circumstances. They remain essentially the same, after changes that would affect the identity of almost anything else.

He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that

have been hallowed by an antiquity or two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these

immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but, by

their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and

sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality. In the present version they may have lost much of their classical aspect

(or, at all events, the author has not been careful to preserve it), and have, perhaps, assumed a Gothic or romantic guise.

In performing this pleasant task, - for it has been really a task fit for hot weather, and one of the most agreeable, of a

literary kind, which he ever undertook, - the author has not always thought it necessary to write downward, in order to

meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the them to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and

when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without an effort. Children possess and unestimated sensibility to whatever

is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple, likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that

bewilder them.

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