Tuscan Songs Collected Translated and Illustrated by Francesca Alexander

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1897. First edition. Hardcover. g to vg. Folio. vii pp., 108 plates, w/ printed tissue guards, 58 (1)pp. Original grass green cloth with gilt lettering and blind-stamped tooling on covers and spine. Gilt top edge. Frontispiece engraving. Title page printed in red and black with publisher's device. One Hundred and eight photogravures from original designs. A selection of poor people's songs and hymns from Tuscany, many of them never been written down before and taught to the author by the celebrated improvisatrice Beatrice Bernardi of Pian degli Ontani, frontispiece portrait. Beautifully illustrated with photogravures of people and places, and scores and texts in Italian and English, with delicate floral decor. A table showing the plates in their order with the text accompanying each at rear. Text in English and Italian. Bookplate of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, possibly that of the founder the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, designed by Bolton Coit Brown, on inside front cover. Bottom and foredge uncut. Binding with light wear along edges and rubbed with three inches horizontal trail on front, three inches vertical trail near foredge of back cover. Some light, sporadic foxing and offsetting and water stain at lower right corner, three by one and a half inches, starting at plate thirty-four to end, not affecting images and diminishing starting at plate eighty-eight. Binding in overall good, interior in very good condition.