Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book

London & New York: Frederick Warne & Co. Later edition. Small square octavo (3 5/8 x 3 3/4 inches; 92 x 95 mm.). [iv], 128, [6] pp. Colored frontispiece, eleven full page color illustrations and numerous plain drawings in the text. Bound ca. 1960 in full red crushed levant morocco, covers ruled in gilt, smooth spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, gilt board-edges, decorative gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Housed in the original fleece-lined, red cloth slipcase. Minimal fading to spine, otherwise very fine.

This lovely little book is in almanac form with blank lined pages opposite most of the illustrations. "Throughout the autumn [of 1880] Ruskin toured the continent, with Kate still on his mind ...He returned to find her Birthday Book awaiting his criticism and wrote from Brantwood: 'Dear Miss Greenaway - I have just got home and find the lovely little book'... Punch congratulated her on her Birthday Book: 'A most dainty little work a really happy thought for Christmas'... To follow up the remarkable success of the Birthday Book, Evans wanted Kate to illustrate a selection of fifty favourite nursery rhymes, to be produced in a small format and called Mother Goose, or The Old Nursery Rhymes" (Engen).

"Victorian-era children's book artist and author Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) began her career during the early 1870s illustrating greeting cards," (NYPL) but she soon turned her successful brush towards book illustration. "Like fellow illustrators Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, Greenaway sought to publish innovative children's works of the highest quality. Her focus on depictions of children, however, set her illustrations apart from those of her contemporaries. Greenaway's work is cherished today for its unaffected, pastoral imagery" (NYPL). Her romantic conception of childhood was based in part on her own experiences. Famous critic John Ruskin was known to be a huge admirer of her art.

Rodney Engen, Kate Greenaway: A Biography, 74 & 79. .