Fairy Rings

2nd edition (first published in 1911 – and edition which was reprinted  three times).  150pp, with three of the four colour plates called for.  Blue cloth covered boards with black lettering front and spine.  12mo.  Cloth is worn, faded and marked, rubbed all round edges, rounded and threadbare on corners and spine tips.  Spine cloth dry and rippled.  Text block edges a little toned and uneven.  Front free endpaper absent.  Remaining endpapers and half-title page toned, with a repeated date stamp on the front paste down.  Some spotting and finger marks throughout.  The leaf carrying pp 5-6 has a three inch tear along the gutter (not obscuring text), and, as mentioned earlier, one of the colour plate illustrations is missing.

Fairy Rings is a classic and once well-loved children’s tale by New Zealander Edith Annie Howes.  She wrote over 30 books for children, although Fairy Rings is her best-known, others include The Cradle Ship and the Sinning Fish.  She was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, although the Nobel Committee dismissed the nomination in a laconic manner.  This not a pretty copy.  It has numerous flaw and is mussing the front free endpaper and, sadly, one the delightful colour plate illustrations.  The text is however complete and it is readable and may serve to fill a gap in a collection until a better copy can be sourced and afforded.