---

This beautiful book has been sold...
Please search for other similar books from our bookseller friends! 

 

---

(Description)

Author: Frederic Cayley Robinson (illustrator). Maurice MAETERLINCK. Alexander Teixeira De Matto (translator).
Title: The Blue Bird. A Fairy Play in Six Acts. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. With twenty-five Illustrations in Colour by F. Cayley Robinson.
Language: Text in English.
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911. First American edition illustrated by Frederick Cayley Robinson.
Size: 10 " X 8 ".
Pages: xvi-211 pages. 
Binding: Attractive and very good original full-cloth binding, decorated in gilt on the front cover with birds (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown) under a removable protective mylar cover. 
Content: Good content (bright, tight, and clean - as shown, lower corner of few illustrations slightly creased - as shown, some foxing and toning to pages thoughout- as shown). Upper edge gilt.
Illustrations: Complete with the 25 enchanting tipped-in color plates by Frederick Cayley Robinson.

Estimation : (USD 150 - USD 200)

The book: Nice First American illustrated edition of The Blue Bird (French: L'Oiseau bleu) -- a 1908 play by Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Maeterlinck. It premiered on 30 September 1908 at Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, and was presented on Broadway in 1910. The play has been adapted for several films and a TV series. The French composer Albert Wolff wrote an opera (first performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1919) based on Maeterlinck's original play, and Maeterlinck's innamorata Georgette Leblanc produced a novelization.
The story is about a girl called Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl seeking happiness, represented by The Blue Bird of Happiness, aided by the good fairy Bérylune.

The author: Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck[1][a] (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.

The illustrator: Frederick Cayley Robinson ARA (18 August 1862 – 4 January 1927) was an English painter, decorator and illustrator. He is perhaps best known for his series of paintings for the Middlesex Hospital entitled Acts of Mercy commissioned around 1915 and completed in 1920.