The Orange Cat and Other Verses. Pictures by P.A. Staynes.
Staynes, P.A.,[]illustrator]. Wolfe, Ffrida.
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, [1910]. First edition. With 16 full-page illustrations, an illustrated title-page, and orange decorative initials. Also includes large head- and tail-pieces for the poems and other in-text illustrations throughout. All illustrations are black-and-white with orange accents. A bit of dampstaining and toning to boards. Rubbed at extremities. Light foxing to endpapers and a bit of toning throughout. Ink inscription on front free endpaper dated November 1910. Overall a very good, clean, and bright copy of a scarcebook. OCLC lists five copies, all in the U.K. Original pictorial boards in orange and green with green cloth spine. Quarto. 44 pp. (Item ID: 16692)
$250.00
The Orange Cat is full of elaborate, striking illustrations of fantastical and sometimes grim scenes: rickety houses built atop stone spires (p. 7), miniature people reminiscent of Palmer Cox’s Brownies (p. 8), a bear flying through clouds (p. 34), and “dead” dolls hanging from ropes (p.19).
P.A. Staynes illustrated a beautiful 1912 edition of Gulliver’s Travels for Sidgwick and Jackson. Staynes and Ffrida Wolfe also collaborated on Roundabout Ways, a 1912 collection of illustrated poems on English history.
