We have a nice copy of
"The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son the Glorious and Mighty Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Fair Swan-Princess" Tale of Tsar Saltan for short. For those that care about such things, and I must confess I do, it is classified as
Aarne-Thompson type 707, the dancing water, the singing apple, and the speaking bird.
However, for me, the real appeal of this edition of Pushkins poem is the Art Deco illustrations by Ivan Bilibin. The colouring is perfect. When you look at many of these illustrations on-line, the colour is too 'clean', the whites too white, the Reds too Red, whereas in real life the colours, as printed by Progress Publishers (Moscow) have a real earthy quality, more in common with William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement than say the comic style of Herge.
If you wish to read a copy of the poem it can be found in all its glory
here thanks to our friends at the
Marxists Internet Archive.
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| The Cover |
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"Then they all sat down to feast."
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| A detail from the Cover |
And to all those fellow bibliophiles who have contacted us requesting these, and other long lost treasures, they are for sale, unless already sold, and unless I am overcome with regret and decide to keep them myself. Please feel free to
contact us to enquire, as this is a Blog rather than a sales catalogue, and as such too hard to update.
