A Story-teller's Pack [Margaret Armstrong Binding] FIRST EDITION

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. First Edition. Hardcover. This 1897 first edition, in a brightly decorated binding designed by the great Margaret Armstrong, celebrates the work of Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902), subversive humorist and writer of both fairy-tales and science fiction, best known for his classroom staple, the fable "The Lady, or the Tiger?" Illustrated throughout in 16 plates by Peter Newell, W. T. Smedley, Frank O. Small, Alice Barber Stephens, and E. W. Kemble, the "Story-teller's Pack" holds among its contents: "The Magic Egg," in which a magician's betrothed investigates his use of a wish-granting egg to hypnotize his audiences; "The Widow's Cruise," chronicling "the very successful endeavor of a good woman, not only to rise to the level of the male maritime yarn, but to soar above it, and to look with pardonable contempt upon certain persons of the contrary sex, who had under-estimated her"; and the supernatural mystery "The Bishop's Ghost and the Printer's Baby," inspired by the crumbling tomb of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

7 3/4" X 5 1/4". viii, 380pp. Binding designed by Margaret Armstrong, with her monogram to upper board. Bound in green cloth over boards, ribboned in gilt and white to upper board and spine, both lettered in gilt, with scrolls and sack in white garlanded in gilt to upper board. Mild wear to binding, with sunning to spine and faintly to edges of rear board and bumping to corners and head and tail of spine. Top edge gilt. Binding is sound. Pages are gently age-toned throughout, with crease to last ten pages, else clean and unmarked. Illustrated in a tissue-guarded frontispiece and 15 black and white plates.