Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Krauss, Ruth. Charlotte and the White Horse. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1955.
Price: US$188.00 + shipping
Description: Book has light soiling and a bump at the foot of the spine thus nearly very good plus. Dj is price clipped, tape repairs, rear cover creases. Front flap has 8 and 4 line descriptions with no wording on either the rear flap or back cover. Maurice Sendaks signature is laid in.
Seller: Uncommon Books, Glastonbury, CT, U.S.A.
Krauss, Ruth; Sendak, Maurice. CHARLOTTE AND THE WHITE HORSE. Harper & Brothers, [New York], 1955.
Price: US$850.00 + shipping
Description: Inscribed first edition of this story of a girl and her horse, illustrated by Sendak in a style inspired by William Blake, uncommon with an inscription by Krauss. Krauss and Sendak worked together across several titles, and her understanding of children would influence his later works. Titles inscribed by Krauss are scarce. Sendak's illustrations for this delicately poetic tale were inspired by his admiration of the work of William Blake; in an interview with Philip Nel, Sendak said this was his "first attempt to unite" the text and illustration in a Blake style (154). 6.5'' x 5.25''. Original cloth backed pictorial boards. Original color pictorial dust jacket. Color floral endpapers. Color pictorial title page with color illustrations throughout. [24] pages. Inscribed by Krauss in ink to verso of front flyleaf. Dust jacket lightly toned to edges, with very light chipping to corners and small closed tear to rear. Corners and spine ends of binding very lightly bumped. A sharp, bright copy. Near fine in very good plus dust jacket.
Seller: Type Punch Matrix, Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.
Price: US$1750.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: SIGNED first edition. Hard cover in original cloth and dust jacket. Published NY: Harper & Brothers, 1955, first printing. [Hanrahan A18]. 12mo., 5 3/8" x 6 3/4", unpaginated 24pp., color illustrations by Maurice Sendak. Sendak's first all-color illustrated book. Black cloth and pictorial paper covered boards, floral design decorative endpapers in color. Inscribed by Sendak to 5 year-old Sing-Si Schwartz on half-title. (Sing-Si later became a fine-arts photographer, and presumably photographed the laid in Sendak illustrations) : "Jul 70' , For Sing-Si, hello: Maurice Sendak" Laid in is a 1955 publication notice of the book in "The Villager", Greenwich Village, NY, Dec 15, 1955 featuring a photo of Sendak holding a dog. Three 4" x 6" duotone prints of Sendak's illustrations for the book laid in. Book is fine with no wear, dust jacket very good, $2 price on flap, mild age toning, darkening fade along the spine with a small chip off the crown, hairline split along dj spine with internal repair, inner front flap has offsetting from newspaper clipping. Three laid in prints fine. Uncommon signed. Size: 12mo
Seller: The Wild Muse, Granville, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$40000.00 + shipping
Description: First edition, first issue of the first book in Crockett Johnsonâs charming Harold series, first issue with "30-60" and "No. 5671A" to the front flap of the dust jacket. 12 mo, original cloth, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to fellow children's book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, "To Maury, with fond regards, Crockett Johnson." The recipient, Maurice Sendak, is best known for his immensely popular illustrated children's book, Where the Wild Things Are, which was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1964 and gained him international fame. Sendak, Johnson, and Johnson's wife Ruth Krauss were introduced by Harper & Row publisher and editor-in-chief of juvenile books Ursula Nordstrom in 1952. Nordstrom facilitated the partnership of Krauss and Sendak as author and illustrator of Krauss' A Hole Is to Dig (1952), which launched Sendak's career and was published 3 years before Harold and the Purple Crayon. Sendak would go on to illustrate seven additional Krauss titles, and their collaborations became something of a cultural phenomenon, spawning a host of imitators of their "unruly" and "rebellious" child protagonists. These "good books for bad children" became Nordstrom's trademark, who disliked the genteel, sentimental tone of earlier American children's literature and sought to change its purpose to appeal to children's imaginations and emotions, rather than serve as adult-approved morality tales. In addition to Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Nordstrom edited and published numerous milestones of children's literature, including E. B. White's Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952), Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (1947), Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1964), and Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree (1964). Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. An exceptional association. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box by the Harcourt Bindery. Crockett Johnsonâ" the pen name for David Johnson Lieskâ"was âa cartoonist whose simplest, sparest and boldest outlines produced unforgettable, gently humorous and always endearing caricatures⦠His natural gift for drawing and writing from a young childâs viewpoint enabled him to craft more than 20 juvenile books,â including this, his most popular one. âWith the fewest of lines, Johnson depicts Harold as a toddler clad in sleepers, his chubby hand gripping a fat plum-colored crayon. From page to page, the thick, firm, purple mark delineates Haroldâs actions against the stark white background so effectively and ingeniously that the crayon is as much a character as Harold. The same economy that informs Johnsonâs art permeates his text; he writes so concisely of Haroldâs moonlight stroll that his style perfectly echoes the clarity of his boldly outlined cartoon illustrationsâ (Silvey, 355).
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.