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Small 4to. Faux full vellum with gilt lettering and elaborate pictorial giltstamping. xii, 251pp. Top edge gilt. Tipped-in color frontispiece with tissue guard with printed caption, 23 full-page color plates (as called for) also with tissue guards with printed captions, pictorial endpapers. Very good. Scarce and lovely first edition of this author's first children's book -- the edition on handmade paper limited to 300 numbered copies (this #96). "The Great Sea Horse" is very reminiscent of Charles Kingsley's children's novel "The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby," and its superb color plates by illustrator John Elliott remind one of Jessie Willcox Smith's "Water-Babies" illustrations -- Anderson notes in her preface "the fantastic water fairies with real shells, curious fish, and birds of the ocean." This unique copy came from the personal collection of famed Boston bookseller Charles E. Goodspeed (1867-1950). Goodspeed had a second home in Boca Grande, Florida, and gave a small number of books (including this one) to the local library there who later deaccessioned it, the Johann Fust Community Library whose bookplate appears on the front pastedown. Better yet, this copy was the personal copy of author Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1867-1948), the Boston heiress and author, wife of noted diplomat Larz Anderson (1866-1937). Her estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, was a castle known as Weld Estate, and was horticulturally significant because of its lush extensive gardens (now the Larz Anderson Park). Her "Library of Isabel and Larz Anderson" Weld bookplate graces the front pastedown, and a small typed note on the front flyleaf (likely placed there by Goodspeed) notes, "This copy belongs on Globe Table in Living Room at Weld House Brookline." A choice association copy, being the author's personal copy of her own book, thence to the private collection of Boston's most famous bibliopole. Accompanied by two booklets: First, a lovely third printing of the scarce booklet, "Bibliography of the Works of ISABEL ANDERSON LL.D., Litt.D. (Mrs. Larz Anderson)," a 16mo 12pp leaflet in dust jacket published in 1935 by C.A.A. Parker of Medford, Massachusetts. Near fine in very good jacket. And secondly, "A Biographical Sketch of LARZ ANDERSON (New York: James T. White & Co., 1914), a 16mo 4pp booklet in stiff brown wrappers. Near fine. Both of these are also Charles Goodspeed's copies, with the bookplate of the Johann Fust Community Library of Boca Grande, Florida on inside front wrapper.
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