[ANDERSEN, HANS CHRISTIAN].  Fairy Tales. Illustrated By Twelve Large Designs in Colour After Original Drawings by E. V. B.  London:  Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1872.

First edition thus.  Cloth-bound.  Hardcover.  Quarto (32 cm x 26 cm x 2 cm).  Pp. vi, [2], 94, [4] advertisements.  English text.  Bound in original green cloth covers elaborately decorated in gilt and black.  Bevelled board edges.  All page edges gilt.  Brown coated endpapers.  Half-title.  Twelve colour illustrations by Eleanor Vere Boyle with captioned tissue-guards.  Head- and tail-pieces.  Decorative initials.  Advertisements to rear.   The eight tales comprise: 'The Wild Swans'; 'The Ugly Duckling'; 'The Fellow Traveller'; 'The Little Mermaid'; 'Thumbkinetta'; 'The Angel'; 'The Garden of Paradise'; and, 'The Snow Queen'.  Printed at the Chiswick Press by Whittingham and Wilkins.  Condition: NEAR FINE.  Contents complete.  Binding tight and secure with the hinges and joints intact.  Minor bumping to spine ends.  Covers very well-preserved.  Trivial light foxing to endpapers but otherwise fresh and clean.  Without previous ownership markings.  An exquisite example and scarce thus.

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