Old Farm Fairies: A Summer Campaign in Brownieland Against King Cobweaver's Pixies
First Edition. Hardcover.
If the silvery spider webs crossing the covers of this arachnid fairy tale don't catch your imagination, the fairy feuds and natural history facts within certainly will!
In Old Farm Fairies, the clergyman-naturalist Henry Christopher McCook (1837 1911) set out to write "a book for youth wherein my observations [about spiders] should be personified in the imaginary creatures of fairy lore, and thus float into the young mind some of my natural history findings in such pleasant form that they would be received quite unconsciously, and at least an impression thereof retained with sufficient accuracy to open the way to more serious lessons in the future."
McCook first thought of such a story, in which spiders are pixies or goblins, "the ill-natured fairies of Scotland and Northern England," while the Brownies, "friendly folk" or "household fairies," are the insects upon which spiders wage war, only a few years into the professional observation of arachnids over twenty years that would lead to his 1893 study American Spiders and Their Spinning Work, a treatise he was determined to publish before turning his hand to this more creative interpretation of his studies.
In these pages, water spiders are smugglers, pirates, and sailors, burrowing and trapdoor spiders introduce tales of caves and subterranean abodes, and ballooning spiders recall modern military methods of reconnaissance, among many other imaginative demonstrations of spider haunts and habits, all illustrated in 150 enchanting vignettes of fairies and spiders of all kinds, many by Daniel Carter Beard, founder of the Boy Scouts of America.
This admittedly worn but still sound and quite charming first printing is inscribed by the author to a young friend and dated Christmas Day 1907.
Presentation copy, signed and inscribed by Henry Christopher McCook to front free endpaper: "To my young friend Catharine Draiment with wishes for a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year" and dated Dec 25th of 1907. 7 1/2" X 5 1/4". xxxvi, 392pp, plus four pages of ads.
Pale golden-green cloth over boards, with a girl in a red plaid skirt and tam o' shanter cap fighting with sword against a spider creature in black with spider webs and daisy in silver and lettering in red and silver to upper board, with spine lettered in kind, along with spider and web in black and silver.
Moderate wear to binding, with gentle bumping to extremities, spine sun-bleached and dulled, crushing to tail of spine with tailband visible, and some soiling to cloth. Both inner hinges show signs of having cracked previously, with tears visible along both pastedowns, with obvious past glue repairs.
Hint of spine at center pages. Binding remains quite firm and sound. Pages are clean and unmarked. Illustrated throughout in 150 vignettes.
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