(Parrish, Maxfield)illus. MOTHER GOOSE IN PROSE by L. Frank Baum. Way & Williams, Chicago, 1897 (1st edition, 1st state). 4to., pictorial gray-white cloth, 265pp., 12 plates. The illustration on the front cover is somewhat rubbed and scratched, and there are spots of light foxing to the cloth. A bookplate has been pasted to the ownership box on the title page, with glue residue visible around it, but the bookplate is that of R. H. Ives Gammell (Master Robert Hale Ives Gammell). The internals are otherwise in remarkably Fine condition, and of the several copies we have had over the years of this scarce and desirable title, Frank Baum's first book for children, and Maxfield Parrish's first illustrated book, this is, overall, the best. R. H. Ives Gammell (1893-1981), was a painter and art historian, who considered himself the last classically trained artist in America. His first book, "The Twilight of Painting," undertaken after he suffered a breakdown upon realization that as an artist, he was out of step with the times, laments what he saw as the end of 500 years of tradition, and deplores modern and abstract art. His later book, "The Boston Painters," is a history of the group of American painters known as "The Boston School."
