The Springtide of Life. Poems of Childhood by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. by [Rackham, Arthur] Swinburne, Algernon Charles - 1918: With a Preface by Edmund Gosse.

1918. London, William Heinemann, 1918. 8°. IX, 132 pages. With eight (8) full-page colour-plates including original, titled tissue-guards and 52 black-and-white text-illustrations. Hardcover / Original, illustrated cloth. Gilt lettering on spine and frontcover. With a charming gilt illustration on the frontcover. Binding slightly stained and rubbed but in overall very good condition with only minor signs of wear. Few minor traces of foxing only. All tipped-in illustrations in place and in excellent condition including the titled tissue-guards. Including the original, pictorial endpapers. Private giftinscription to endpaper. Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 - 6 September 1939) was an English book illustrator. Rackham was born in London as one of 12 children. At the age of 18, he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art. In 1892 he left his job and started working for The Westminster Budget as a reporter and illustrator. His first book illustrations were published in 1893 in To the Other Side by Thomas Rhodes, but his first serious commission was in 1894 for The Dolly Dialogues, the collected sketches of Anthony Hope, who later went on to write The Prisoner of Zenda. Book illustrating then became Rackham's career for the rest of his life. In 1903 he married Edyth Starkie, with whom he had one daughter, Barbara, in 1908. Rackham won a gold medal at the Milan International Exhibition in 1906 and another one at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1912. His works were included in numerous exhibitions, including one at the Louvre in Paris in 1914. Arthur Rackham died in 1939 of cancer in his home in Limpsfield, Surrey. Rackham invented his own unique technique which resembled photographic reproduction; he would first sketch an outline of his drawing, then lightly block in shapes and details. Afterwards he would add lines in pen and India ink, removing the pencil traces after it had dried. With colour pictures, he would then apply multiple washes of colour until transparent tints were created. He would also go on to expand the use of silhouette cuts in illustration work. Typically, Rackham contributed both colour and monotone illustrations towards the works incorporating his images - and in the case of Hawthorne's Wonder Book, he also provided a number of part-coloured block images similar in style to Meiji era Japanese woodblocks. (Wikipedia)