The Water-Babies : A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (Black’s Boys’ and Girls’ Library)

276pp, wilt colour plate frontispiece, three further colour plate illustrations and occasional line drawings in text. In publisher’s blue cloth boards, blind stamped decorations and black lettering front and spine (boards just a little rubbed and rounded on corners and spine tips). Internally a little toning on endpapers only, else neat, clean, bright and tight. There’s a small bookseller’s ticket on the rear paste down endpaper, indicating that the book was once in the stock of S C Jennings, Booksellers of 27 High Street, Redhill. A lovely vintage copy of this classic tale for children, with charming and bright colour illustrations. A very popular book in the late 19th century, in part satire on Darwin’s Origin of the Species, it fell out of favour in response to perceived prejudices against Jews, the Irish and Catholics.