To Nursery Land with Louis Wain

London: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1909. Second edition. Second, enlarged edition, the companion to the Tuck book of the same title issued in the same year. Publisher's red cloth backed color pictorial boards. Large quarto (10 1/4 x 7 3/8 in; 262 x 190 mm). Collating 48, [1, adv.], [1 , blank]. Full-color frontispiece (Tommy on his Travels). Text on every page. Sixteen pages printed in two colors (green and black, red and black, orange and black). Neat gift inscription dated "Xmas 1923." A bit of minor rubbing to extremities, otherwise an internally crisp, clean, and Fine copy. Father Tuck's Golden Gift Series No. 817, similar to Father Tuck's Golden Gift Series No. 805 with same title yet with sufficient differences in illustration, text length (48 pages versus 72 pages) and variations, and binding to warrant them being separate editions.

At the end of the last century, Louis Wain (1860-1939), the Edwardian cat artist, became a household name as an illustrator of cats, whom he depicted in all sorts of activities, from skating and playing cricket to driving motor cars, attending dances, and playing musical instruments. "He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves" (H.G. Wells).

"From 1883, Wain began to draw cats as they had never been drawn before, cats in humorous guises, in human situations, but always beautifully handled...although he was sometimes forced to draw dogs before he became well- known!" (Houfe, The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists 1800-1914).

Wood, Wain, 202.