St. Francis of Assisi
London: Hodder & Stoughton Limited, 1926. First illustrated edition. Original russet cloth (7 7/8 inches), gilt spine and front board with mounted color illustration, pale gray endpapers, original dust wrapper with mounted color illustration. Gutter cracked at p.130 but holding, slight foxing to edges and earliest and last leaves, modest toning to spine of dust jacket. Item #1706
"THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS FOUND IN MR. CHESTERTON THE GREATEST INTERPRETER OF HER GREATEST SAINT" (PATRICK BRAYBROOKE)
First Illustrated Edition of G.K. Chesterton's Life of St. Francis of Assisi—illustrated for the first time with Art Nouveau-style color plates after watercolors by Frederick Cayley Robinson, separately printed and tipped to thick gray paper (and protected by a captioned tissue-guard). An excellent copy, complete with the scarce original printed dust wrapper—with an additional illustration, "Meeting of Saint Louis of France and Brother Giles" mounted on the front panel.
"Chesterton's life of St. Francis was destined to be one of the most commercially and critically successful of all his books." First published (by Hodder & Stoughton) in 1923, St. Francis of Assisi is sometimes referred to as GKC's "conversion book" but "Chesterton enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Saint Francis of Assisi" which preceded his conversion to Catholicism. "The admiration that Chesterton felt towards Saint Francis was inextricably bound up with his belief in the superiority of childlike innocence over all forms of cynicism" (Joseph Pearce, Catholic Literary Giants).
The illustrations by Cayley Robinson include a frontispiece portrait of Saint Francis, an illustrated title page ("The Ascent of Mount Alvernia"), and six additional plates in the text depicting the great Saint and his companions: 1. Saint Francis in Prayer, 2. Meeting of St. Louis of France and Brother Giles, 3. Saint Clare Blessing the Bread, 4. Saint Francis in Meditation, 5. Saint Francis Reveals Himself After His Death to a Holy Brother, and 6. Saint Francis Preaching to the Birds. A painter particularly known for his idyllic and domestic scenes, Frederick Cayley-Robinson was "influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Burne-Jones, the Symbolist Puvis de Chavannes, and—after his trip to Florence in 1898—Fra Angelico" (Benezet Dictionary of Artists). Joseph Pearce Catholic Literary Giants: A Field Guide to the Catholic Literary Landscape; Sullivan, G.K. Chesterton: A Bibliography, 57.
Price: $350.00