Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa Genom Sverige [Nils Holgersson's Wonderful Journey through Sweden.] [Complete in 2 Vols.]

Bookseller Notes

An example of an emergent copy significantly updating what is known about the form in which a major work was issued - here in the presence of the original pictorial dustjackets to both volumes, a feature whose existence has been a point of obscurity for more than eleven decades, with the consensus forming that it had been published without. The dustjackets here present are printed on heavy brown paper with the respective pictorial designs of the cloth reproduced in monochrome to each - that the method of reproduction is photographic is evident in the fact that the grain of the cloth is visible. The lettering also replicates the underlying design, except in the typeface used for the author's name on that to second volume (and other slight variants). The text provided on the other panels provides other useful information regarding its entry onto the market: it gives the price for both the wrapper and the cloth issues, and - on the first volume - announces in the panel to the rear that the second volume is scheduled for the following year (a reliable indicator of the originality of the dustjacket as a feature). The second volume, in the same place, refers back to the first.An attractive, and bibliographically important, set of these charming books, produced to teach school-children their native geography through the fictional adventures of the mischievous hero - who journeys around the provinces with a wild goose as his steed. A best-seller, and part of the national consciousness of Sweden - its author and hero depicted on the country's twenty krona banknote, an example of which is laid in to the first volume for corroboration (a practice we don't intend to introduce as standard with Churchill, Austen, Adam Smith, et al.) Lagerlf was the first female winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1909 - her nomination resting in large part on this, her best-known work.