The Happy Family by Louis Wain first edition 1910

WAIN, Louis. The Happy Family. Stories & Poems by Edric Vredenburg, Clifton Bingham, Norman Gale, Grace C. Floyd, etc. London: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., [1910].
 
280 x 230 mm. 96 pp. Original brown pictorial boards with brown cloth spine, the upper board with a large mounted colour illustration by Louis Wain and numerous small black-and-white cat figures around the border. Illustrated throughout by Wain, with 8 full-page colour plates including the frontispiece, together with numerous black-and-white illustrations, decorations and vignettes.
About Very Good. The boards are rubbed and scuffed, with wear to edges and corners; the inner hinges are a little cracked at front and rear but remain holding. There is a brown adhesive stain from a removed strip of tape opposite p.27. Otherwise a sound, complete and unrestored copy. Recorded copies show some variation in the binding and arrangement of the colour illustrations; in the present copy the family-group image is mounted to the front board, while "The Musical Family" forms the colour frontispiece.
 
A rare Louis Wain book from the height of his popularity. Rather than illustrating a single narrative, Wain sketches for a collection of stories and poems by several contemporary writers, among them Edric Vredenburg, Clifton Bingham, Norman Gale and Grace C. Floyd. The result is a rich concentration of his anthropomorphic cats, appearing on every page.
 
The subjects are quintessential Wain: cats as musicians, artists, schoolchildren, families, sportsmen and respectable members of Edwardian society. The contents include "The Happy Family", "The Motherpuss Family", "Pussy Town", "The Kittens Who Went to School", "The Circus Cats" and other characteristically feline tales.