The Water Babies (The Collector's Library of Famous Editions)

ix, [3], 240, [2] pp. Full leather, gilt titles and decorations, all edges gilt, silk moire endpapers, ribbon marker bound in. Color frontispiece and plates by Jessie Willcox Smith, with illustrations in green ink throughout text. The classic tale of Tom , the poor chimney sweep. His life is hard until he escapes and is turned into a charming water baby only four inches long. He meets many strange new creatures in his adventures. This book has been delighting readers for over one hundred years, written by the author for his own children. "The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by the Reverend Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862-63 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. It was written as part satire in support of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. The book was extremely popular in England, and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades, but eventually fell out of favor in part due to its prejudices (common at the time) against Irish, Jews, Americans, and the poor."