Makuszyński Koronel- Very strange fairy tales [illustrations by Mikołaj Wisznicki](rare)

Warsaw 1929/ Gebethner and Wolff/18,5x23,5cm/s.195/ 9 black and white illustrations outside the text/ publisher's binding, hardback, half cloth/ very good condition-,minor rubbing of binding, minor rubbing of gilt on spine, foreign dedication on pre-title page, ownership stamp on the same page, minor soiling of single pages. Despite minor flaws, a very nice piece. Rare.

Cover design and striking illustrations by Nikolai Vishnitsky.

This book, written for Polish children wandering around Russia during the war, was first published in Kiev in 1916. Published several times in Poland, it appears today in a multiplied edition; everything in it has been preserved without change.

About the book:, "One of the earlier works of this artist is the illustrations accompanying Kornel Makuszynski's Very Strange Fairy Tales , first published in 1916 in Kiev..... .Since then the book has had several editions, reaching a total circulation of well over thirty thousand pieces. It is this number that falls on the title page of the 1929 Gebethner and Wolff edition, for which Vishnitsky designed a modern version of the cover, dividing its plane of color into several separate rectangles. In doing so, he did not countenance any of the isms fashionable in the 1920s. This is evidenced by the traditional drawn figure of the king wearing a crown and an ominous scarecrow. The scene captures well the atmosphere of Makuszyński's wartime fairy tales, which are not cheerful after all, and death runs through them at every opportunity, including in Vishnitsky's illustrations. They were created still at the end of the war, in 1918, as evidenced by the dates accompanying the author's signatures.'' (Source: Jan Straus, Now Cover, Warsaw 2021, pp.548-549)