This fairy tale book is a first edition titled The Great Sea Horse and was written by Isabel Anderson (1876 - 1948). 

Size: 9 1/2 x 7 in. 

Née Isabel Weld Perkins, a Boston heiress, author, and society hostess who came from a wealthy Boston family that traced their ancestry way back. She spent summers as a child in Newport and winters in Boston, and she wrote several travelogues, volumes of poetry, and many children's stories. Her husband was Larz Anderson, a noted diplomat, and after they married, they lived at their castle in Brookline, Mass. - yes, it was a castle called the Weld Estate - and accumulated a large collection of horse-drawn carriages, sleighs and motorcars that are now on display at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum, the oldest collection of motorcars in the US.   

The book measures 9 1/2 x 7 inches wide and has a gilt decorated spine and front cover, endpapers with blue waves breaking, an owner’s inscription on a front flyleaf (with a pencilled note that says “all plates present”, as they are), a half-title, a colored frontis with a protective  tissue guard, then the title page, which says the book was published by Little Brown in 1909, the copyright page is dated 1909 with no other printings listed, a short Preface, then a two- page list of Contents, a two-page list of Illustrations (there are twenty-four full-page plates from pastel drawings by John Elliott), 251 pages of text, all the tissue guards are present, with red lettering to give the name of the plate and the page number related to the plate, the top edge is gilt, the book is a first edition by Little Brown because there is just a single date on the title and copyright page and the dates match, and the color plates by John Elliott are reminiscent of Jessie Willcox Smith's illustrations for Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies. 

The book is in pretty good condition, with a tight binding and clear pages and text, the plates are clean, and the gilt on the front cover is still bright. The spine has faded, there is light rubbing at the heel and crown, along the edges of the boards, and at the tips, and the page with the owner’s name in front has become loose. Still an attractive book that appeals to a child’s fancy - even an adult. We only found three copies listed on the rare book website we use and three more on other sites, so the book is a scare copy of a desirable book.  

#6268