East of The Sun and West of The Moon. Old Tales from The North.

Illustrated by Kay Nielsen. First US Quarto edition. Undated. Hardback. Publisher's original yellow cloth binding with red lettering to front and to spine. Small 4to. 204pp. No jacket. Decorated endpapers. Colour frontispiece and 24 tipped-in full colour plates by Kay Nielsen together with numerous black & white in-text line drawings and decorated head and tail pieces. These stories originally appeared in "Norske Folkeeventyr" by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Ergebreken Moe. A selection of the stories were published in Sir G. W Dasent's "Popular Tales form the Norse", published by George Routledge & Sons. The prerface to this edition describes Kay Nielsen as having the advantage of beiung able to read the original text of these stores rather than the English rendering. This however means that "the exquisite bizarrerie of his drawings aptly expresses the innermost significance of the old-world, old wives' fables. For to term these legends, Nursery Tales, would be to curtail them...They are the romances of the childhood of Nations: they are the never-failing springs of sentiment, of sensation, of heroic example, from which primeval peoples drank their fill at will. The quaintness, the tenderness, the grotesque yet realistic intermingling of actuality with supernaturalism, by which the original "Norske Folkeeventy" are characterised, will make an appeal to all, as represented in the pictures of Kay Nielsen. And these imperishable traditions, whose bases are among the very roots of antiquity, are here reincarnated in line and colour, to the delight of all who ever knew or now shall know them." Book in good condition. Corners a little bumped and worn, extremities of spine worn and a little frayed. Boards generally a little soiled. Spine slightly faded. Binding very sound and all plates firmly in place. Internally just a little light toning around page edges but otherwise very clean and bright. The illustrations to this book by Kay Nielsen are generally regarded as among his best.