Louis Wain's Annual 1913

WAIN, Louis. Louis Wain's Annual 1913. London: John F. Shaw & Co. Ltd., 1913.
 
Quarto, 245 x 185 mm. [9], 10-90, [4] pp. Original colour pictorial wrappers, the front cover featuring one of Wain's characteristic laughing cats. Six mounted colour plates, all present, together with numerous full-page and smaller black-and-white illustrations by Louis Wain throughout.
Some surface marks along the left side of the front cover where old adhesive tape has been removed, with light creasing and rubbing at the extremities. Otherwise remarkably well preserved: firmly bound, internally clean, and with the six mounted colour plates bright and intact. A very good copy, better than is usually found. 
 
The 1913 issue of Wain's long-running annual, devoted extensively to the anthropomorphic cats for which he became famous. Wain's cats inhabit an unmistakably human world, shopping, working, playing games and finding themselves in comic domestic situations; the annual format gave him unusual scope to combine these humorous drawings with more conventional animal portraits and elaborate colour work. Among the illustrations is a mounted colour portrait of a Persian kitten belonging to Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, alongside numerous comic cat scenes including "The Mechanical Toy Canary". A difficult title to find in this condition.