Edmund Dulac's Picture-Book for the French Red Cross by DULAC, Edmund, illustrator

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915. Edmund Dulac's "Picture-Book for the French Red Cross"[DULAC, Edmund, illustrator]. Edmund Dulac's Picture-Book for the French Red Cross. London: Published for the Daily Telegraph by Hodder and Stoughton, [n.d., 1915].First edition. Large quarto (10 13/16 x 8 5/16 inches; 275 x 211 mm.). [8], 134, [2] pp. Nineteen color plates (including frontispiece) plus a black and white camera portrait of Dulac, all mounted on gray art paper framed with light green bands and with green letterpress.Original tan cloth over boards with front cover and spine pictorially stamped and lettered in dark blue. Front inner hinge just starting but still sound. pp. 11/12 & 13/14 neatly re-margined at half-inch of outer margin. Original pictorial dust jacket with a color illustration from the book mounted on front panel. A very good copy in a very good dust jacket."A Frenchman by birth, Dulac was the logical illustrator to compile a gift book which could be used to raise money for the French Red Cross. To meet the worthy obligation with dispatch, Dulac seems to have hastily assembled a group of pictures he had filed away at his studio. Fifteen of the pictures he used had previously been printed. Three, 'Asenath', 'The Bird Feng' and 'Cerberus', were new paintings first reproduced in this book, though the last-mentioned was probably intended to be used in Tanglewood Tales and diverted to the Red Cross volume. When the collection was reprinted after the war, as the Picture Book, the picture 'The Bird Feng' was dropped and used as a 16th picture in the formerly 15-picture Fairy Book, illustrating 'A Chinese Fairy Tale'. Dulac designed the Red Cross book's binding and wrote an appeal for the organization which was printed under his photograph. The Red Cross book was widely reviewed in contemporary periodicals…The Outlook weekly (November 27, 1915) in its review stated 'It is a wonderful chance that enables the public to become the possessor of so many of Edmund Dulac's inimitable pictures for so small a sum. Dulac's pictures…are unique'" (Hughey)."The 4 oval plates facing pp. 8, 55, 62, 80 are reprinted from L'Illustration 1913 Christmas number; plate facing p. 16 is from The Rubáiyát; that facing p. 18 was first printed in Century magazine October 1913; the one facing p. 22 was reprinted from Vanity Fair; those facing pp. 32, 58 are from Hans Andersen; that facing p. 41 was first printed, though in black and white, in Art Chronicles, April 5, 1912; facing pp. 50, 120 are from Sindbad; facing pp. 72, 86 are from The Sleeping Beauty; facing p. 102 is from Princess Badoura" (Hughey).Hughey 39.