The Peradventures of Private Pagett

London: Chapman and Hall, 1904. First edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. A near fine copy in like rare dust jacket. Octavo. (7 5/16 x 4 13/16 inches; 185 x 122 mm). [12], 242, [2] pp. Eight half-tone plates by Rackham. Publisher's orange-red cloth pictorially stamped and lettered in black on front cover and spine. Minimal rubbing to extremities, light marginal foxing throughout. Complete with the very scarce publisher's light gray pictorial dust jacket.

"There is nothing serious about the stories of Mr. Pagett, ex-private of Marines, and some of them are very amusing....People who like comic sketches dealing with both "Services" (Private Pagett was "soldier and sailor too"), and who are not wearied by the account of the hero's perpetual drunkenness, will be amused by this short collection of stories of land and sea" (The Spectator Archive). Lieutenant-Colonel William Price Drury CBE (1861-1949) was a British Royal Marine Light Infantry officer as well as a novelist, playwright, and politician. Most of literacy output deals with naval themes, and his play The Flag Lieutenant (1908) was adapted for film, not once, but three times. He is also credited with the phrase "Tell it to the Marines" despite his apocryphal claim that it was said by King Charles II. Rackham's humorous stye is a perfect fit Drury's short stories.

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children's books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic-from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.

Riall, p. 61; Latimore and Haskell p. 23. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket.