THE KNAVE OF HEARTS. WITH PICTURES BY MAXFIELD PARRISH.

NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. Near Fine with no dust jacket. 1925. First Edition. Hardcover. Color Illustrations; 4to 11" - 13" tall; Collates complete [6], 46, [1], [3, blank] pages. Color frontispiece (included in pagination) , with tissue guard, and color illustrations (fifteen full-pageincluding frontis and tp). Original black cloth hard cover with color pictorial label on front cover. Color pictorial endpapers. Signed neatly by Anne Marie O'Connor 1929 on "This is the Book of-" page. If you hold the book's leaves at an angle to the light you can just see a few spots where the slick coating has slightly dulled. Minor crease at the tip of the front end paper and short tape repair. Very light foxing to blank eps and a few leaves with light aging to edges. All in all it is about as close to perfect as you can get. A truly outstanding example. Large quarto (13.9125 x 11.4375 inches). "Not until 1920 did [Parrish] agree to illustrate what was to become one of the most valuable children's books ever published, Louise Saunders's Knave of Hearts. Saunders was the wife of Maxwell Perkins, the editor of Scribner's. They summered in Cornish, New Hampshire, and were friends with the Parrishes. In a letter to J. H. Chapin of Scribner's, Parrish wrote on October 24, 1920: 'The reason I wanted to illustrate the Knave of Hearts was on account of the bully opportunity it gives for a very good time making the pictures. Imagination could run riot, not bound down by the period, just good fun and all sorts of things. You must understand all this layout to be in gorgeous color. The landscapes back of the figures in the cover lining-a very beautiful affair illuminated by a golden late afternoon sun: castles, waterfall, rocks and mountains.' Parris relished working three years on the twenty-six paintings for the Knave of Hearts. He built an elaborate castle model in his fully equipped workroom to use in the illustrations for the book...Many of the fixtures in the illustrations show handcrafted items from the Parrish household, such as elaborate hinges and a wonderful clocklike affair...that Parrish had built to let him know when the main house ran out of well water...Knave of Hearts, published in October 1925, was printed in rich colors on heavy coated paper. The illustrations were the highest quality reproductions that could be printed" (Alma Gilbert, Maxfield Parrish: The Masterworks, pp. 49-52). Ludwig, p. 206." .