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Octavo, pp. [1-12] 13-199 [200: blank], eight inserted plates with illustrations in color by K. Romney Towndrow, original decorated black cloth, front and spine panel stamped in gold, top edge stained black, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. First edition, first binding; black cloth with "Faber & Gwyer" printed at base of spine panel. Presentation copy with signed inscription by Morris on front free endpaper: "Chas James Ryan / with the gratitude of / Kenneth Morris." The author's second book and the only collection of his short fiction published during his lifetime. The stories assembled for this collection "were selected from work written after 1914, and generally promulgate Theosophical principles with unobtrusive and supple tact. The world of the senses can be understood as manifesting a stage of meaning, a phase in the progression towards a higher reality, but with full reality always immanent. Mortality is generally contrasted with immortality as a matter of choice: mortals choose to serve, immortals choose transcendence. The settings run from the Wales of Celtic fantasy, with which Morris is most clearly associated, through Greece, Rome, India and China. Sages and other liminal beings offer gnomic advice, and point the way upwards. The narrative tend to serenity. Morris's influence has been small, but he is central to the genre." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), pp. 663-64. Until the final decades of the twentieth-century Morris's work was relatively unknown due to the scarcity of his books. Ursula K. Le Guin considers Morris, E. R. Eddison and J. R. R. Tolkien to be the three "master stylists" of modern fantasy. Barron (ed), Fantasy Literature 3-255. Schlobin, The Literature of Fantasy 799. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature III, pp. 1372-74. Tymn (ed), Fantasy Literature, pp. 144-45. Reginald 10396. Zahorski and Boyer, p. 215. Binding slightly leaned, some wear to cloth at spine ends, three corner tips and along outer rear joint, top edge stain faded, a very good copy in very good decorated dust jacket (fragile blue-gray paper stock) with several splits along flap folds and fraying along top edge with shallow chipping at head of spine panel and corner tips. The jacket is trimmed slightly taller than the book and shelf wear along the top edge is virtually inevitable. Copies of this book signed or inscribed by Morris are rare. (#8737).
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