Spenser's Faerie Queene.

London: George Allen,, 1894-97. In the original parts First Crane edition, deluxe issue, number 17 of 28 copies printed on japon, of which 25 only were for sale. This is one of the finest editions of Spenser's masterpiece and "Crane's most important work in terms of quantity... a major achievement among Crane's later black and white work" (Spencer, p. 135). This was one of Crane's last commissions, appearing towards the end of his career when his fame as a book illustrator was well established. In his treatise Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New (1896), he explained the approach he adopted to illustrate The Faerie Queene: "The full page designs are all treated as panels of figure design, or pictures and are enclosed in fanciful borders, in which subsidiary incidents of characters of the poem are introduced or suggested, somewhat on the plan of mediaeval tapestries" (p. 222); he also pointed out that the designs expressed "my own feeling - and designing must always finally be a question of individual feeling" (p. 217). Spenser's text was edited by the bibliographer and collector Thomas James Wise (1859-1939). "The Allen edition combined work by a noted bibliophile and a skilled artist. While Wise subsequently became notorious as a thief and forger, Crane's reputation steadily increased, not simply for his artistic work but for a role in establishing the Socialist League with William Morris and fostering decorative arts in Britain. Crane served as Master of the Art-Workers Guild, twice President of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, and in 1898 Principal of the Royal College of Art" (Richmond, p. 25). Loosely inserted in the final volume is a publisher's slip thanking Waterlow & Sons for printing the illustrations from part VI to the end. 19 parts, quarto. Original pictorial wrappers printed in black. Housed in seven black cloth solander boxes, spines and front covers lettered in gilt. Frontispieces, 88 plates (one double-page), half-title, title pages, and numerous in-text illustrations by Crane; 6 facsimile reproductions of the title pages and woodcuts of the early editions. Wrappers bright, some neatly reattached, a little creasing to edges, else a sharp, fresh set. Houfe, p. 271. Walter Crane, Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New, 1896; Velma Bourgeois Richmond, The Fairie Queene as Children's Literature. Victorian and Edwardian Retellings in Words and Pictures, 2016; Isobel Spencer, Walter Crane, 1975.