Mollie's Bunyip

Melbourne: Robert Jolley (with the logo of 'The Atlas Press | E. Newland | Manager' printed inside the rear cover), 1904. First Edition. Paperback. Very Good. Melbourne, Robert Jolley (with the logo of 'The Atlas Press | E. Newland | Manager' printed inside the rear cover), 1904. Oblong quarto (external dimensions 210 × 240 mm), [50] pages (half of them blank, either recto or verso) with a monochrome (sepia) pictorial title page, 12 full-page illustrations (nine of them facing facing separate poems with monochrome vignette illustrations, three of them facing a blank page), 2 pages of verse with monochrome vignette illustrations, and an unillustrated page of verse (these last three facing blank pages). Overlapping plum-coloured wrappers - illustrated front and rear - bound with ribbon (recently renewed), with expert consolidation and some minor infill to the edges; leaves uncut; title page, a thin strip around the edges of the third page, and the last page (a blank) are tanned from contact with the wrappers; narrow light tidemark and trifling silverfish damage to the foot of the title leaf; overall, an excellent copy of a rare and fragile production. Verses by Annie Rattray Rentoul, with illustrations by her younger sister Ida Sherbourne Rentoul (later Outhwaite) - her first illustrated book. The rear cover illustration incorporates a quote from Henry Kendall ('In soft Australian nights, And through the furnaced noons'). Muir 6334.