KING LUCKIEBOY'S PICTURE BOOK: King Luckieboy's Party; This Little Pig Went to Market; The Old Courtier.. by CRANE, Walter (illustrator).:

London, Routledge and Sons, printed by Edmund Evans, (1871).. FIRST EDITION (1871), small 4to, 247 x 185 mm, 9¾ x 7¼ inches, blue cloth, bevelled edges, decorated black and gilt, mounted coloured plate of children playing blindman's buff (not by Crane), gilt lettering to upper cover, lettered on gilt panel on spine, all edges gilt. Contains a 4th toy book: Picture Book of Horses not by Crane (some illustrations signed J. B. Zwecker). Pages: general title page, adverts on verso, 2 pages of adverts at rear, each story has a half-title and 8 pages of brightly coloured illustrations with verse inset, all printed 1 side only. Spine badly faded and worn at head and tail, corners worn with tiny chips to cloth, slight fading and slight staining to upper corner of upper cover, tiny chip to edge of mounted plate, lower cover faded and slightly wrinkled, 1 small split to cloth neatly glued, inner paper hinges split and neatly repaired, neat inscription to front endpaper dated 1871, tiny transfer picture on margin of page 2 of first story partly covering 2 letters, all legible (see image 1), slight insect damage to lower margin of page 8 of This Little Pig, half-title to The Old Courtier has a closed tear to inner edge and a shallow strip missing at the top, now repaired and reinserted, same insect damage to lower margin of page 1 of The Old Courtier, some pencil scribble to blank side of 3 plates, mostly erased with no show-through, otherwise contents clean, small closed tear to rear endpaper repaired. A good copy of an uncommon Crane Picture Book. Spencer page 202; Osborne I, page 93 is a book with our title but a different set of stories; this title not in Oppenheimer or Gumuchian. Our 3 Crane titles were also issued singly. MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING, ALL ZOOMABLE, FURTHER IMAGES ON REQUEST. POSTAGE AT COST.