The Rhinegold & The Valkyrie

London and New York: William Heinemann and Doubleday, Page & Co, 1928 A fair copy in the original grey decorative cloth binding with designs and 34 tipped-in colour plates by Arthur Rackham. The binding has been rebacked - relaying the original spine and endpapers, so it is nice and tight. There is some bumping to the front top corner and the back board corners. The binding is very clean with some fading and browning to the spine. The original decorative endpapers are free of inscriptions - there is a little grubbiness - the back free endpaper has had a sheet of music pasted to the reverse - the music contains the motifs to Siegfried, the ring and other relevant sections. There is an ink inscription to a preliminary 'To Elizabeth for her "seventeenth" birthday - from Daddy and Mummie with our best love 19 Aug'. There is some spotting to preliminaries and the text pages have a brown tint especially to edges. This book is classed as 'fair' and priced cheaply because there is some damage to the plates. They are all present but 7 have slight creases - to the left bottom corner and 5 have very noticeable creases again mainly to the left corner. Three of the backing pages for the plates have small repaired paper tears to the edges. The plate opposite page 104 has a small spot of loss where the plate surface has come off onto the tissue guard. The backing plate for the final plate has very nibbled edges. There is the odd mark to pages but the contents are generally clean.