William M. Timlin (1892–1943)

I received this as a present for Christmas from my parents in 2011, I adore this book. I had never heard of this book prior to receiving it and I thought the story behind the author and the limited printing of the original was awesome: a rarely seen but amazing book.

So quick, interesting, personal story time now. I got the book for Christmas and read the intro by John Howe and the whole history of the author, etc., but didn't get to read the entire story as I was on Christmas break from show more college and did not have time. The next month, January, I start an internship at my university's archive, getting to work with old to really old books and documents (example: getting to scan a letter written my Mark Twain or Napoleon). A couple of months later I'm helping the head of the archives unload a bunch of old books he took to a meeting somewhere, basically to show off what the archive has in order to encourage people to donate money. While I was loading books onto a cart, on top of one of the piles of books was an ORIGINAL edition of this book.

I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped.

Later I got to flip through the book and there's actually not that much of a difference between the original and this reprint. The intro from John Howe and the history is obviously not in the original, but the original is thicker than this one. Each page with a picture isn't a solid sheet like this one, but each picture is separately glued to the page it's on. So, if you wanted to, you could remove the artwork. Otherwise, this reprint looks exactly like the original, just as pretty.

The story isn't too complicated, but the ideas are really interesting. It's a mix of early science fiction and fairy/medieval fantasy, and works pretty well I think. It's half art-book so you really need to experience the book yourself to appreciate the story.

A great book to get for yourself or a friend who is into interesting books that no one has heard of, but are really cool and everyone should know about them! show less

Such a strange fairy-story, but how delightful to read something so imaginative from the 1920s, and the illustrations are a marvel.

Original 1923 edition is extremely hard to find and worth many thousands of dollars. It took 70 years to reprint this edition, which is considered to be one of the first science fiction books. Even the 1993 edition is hard to find, but the quality of the pages, printing and images do not come close to the original. A wonderful story, with unique fantasy illustrations by the South American illustrator William Timlin (who lived there for a time).

Extremely rare book. 2000 copies printed. 250 copies distributed to the United States. Expect to pay
3 to 5K for a decent copy. Considered one of the finest illustrated books of the last century.