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Kingsley, The Rev. Charles. THE WATER-BABIES: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. With Two Illustrations by J. Noel Paton, R.S.A. London & Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1863. 1 page undated ads. Original green cloth decorated in gilt.
First Edition, first state (with the "L'Envoi" leaf; after the first copies were issued, it was suppressed and excluded from the rest of the edition). This is Kingsley's famous fairy tale written for his youngest son (the "land-baby", and dedicatee). Little Tom the chimney sweep, bullied by his employer Grimes, runs away, falls into a river, and is transformed into a water-baby; thereafter he learns (from other water creatures he meets, and also from the fairies Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby and Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid) the need to show and to seek kindness. Certainly the tale is a moral didactic fable, preaching human redemption in a form of Purgatory, but it also shows Kingsley's love of nature and his indignation at the Victorian practice of child labor; Kingsley also used the book as an opportunity to satirize those scientists who were responding negatively to Darwin's then-new theory of evolution (which Kingsley had been one of the first to praise).
This is a good-to-very good copy: externally there is some wear at the extremities and the gilt is a little rubbed; internally the volume is in quite good shape except that an early owner wrote names or initials on the various "water-babies" shown in the frontispiece. An uncommon book in the first state; this copy is not in ideal condition, but then, such a copy would be about six times this price. Wolff 3812 (in calf).
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