W. Heath Robinson - Bill The Minder - 1912

A first edition of William Heath Robinson's "Bill the Minder...", published in London, 1912. A complete copy with all sixteen colour plates, plus numerous full-page and vignette black and white illustrations by William Heath Robinson throughout. This a presentation copy, relevant blind stamp at head of title page.
4to, bound in original publishers gilt decorated and lettered green cloth, upper board with central mounted colour printed pictorial plate, upper page edges green. Original plain endpapers pastedown with ink manuscript gift inscription, ink price stamp and presentation copy blind stamp at head of titlepage.

The book measures 19cm by 25cm.

The contents are complete but for one tissue guard lacking at pp156. Meeting collation: xiv, [2], 254, [2]pp, with all sixteen colour plates, profusely illustrated with fullpage and vignette black and white illustrations by William Heath Robinson throughout. unfurls. Following the great success of his first major work, the masterpiece Uncle Lubin (1902), Heath Robinson followed up with another fantasy about a guardian of the young, but this time a champion child minder, Bill. The book is made up of 16 crazy stories which combine to form a work which the artist himself referred to as "not a book for children". Constable, the publisher, commissioned 125 line drawings, which are very finely executed and among Heath Robinson's best work, as well as 16 plates of jewel-like colour which surpass, in quality, much of his output.