Le Petit Chaperon Rouge

London: Cyril Beaumont, 1918. Tijtgat, Edgard. Octavo. (iii), 16, (1+16)ff., frenchfold. From an edition of fifty copies, this is one of ten printed on chine and signed by the artist. This is the story of Little Red Riding Hood, with woodcut text and illustrations by Belgian artist Edgard Tijtgat. Sixteen illustrations, hors texte, appear in two states: color and bistre. Tijtgat's illustrations are bold and expressionistic in style, and also deceptively innocent: things do not end well for Red Riding Hood in Charles Perrault's moral and more sinister version of the tale. Floral motif on the endpapers and repeated throughout the book. Tijtgat is associated with the Brabant Fauvists, a Belgian movement focused on pure, bold colors and simplified lines, similar to the Fauves led by Henri Matisse in France. During World War I, Tijtgat set up his printshop in England, where this book was published. Light foxing to upper margins of a few pages, some faint offsetting from prints, short closed tear to spine foot. Overall a fine copy in color-printed pictorial boards. (Ridley: Beaumont 10).