The Fairy Market

VAN SANDWYK, Charles 

The Fairy Market 

Vancouver: The Fairy Press, [2009]

8vo., burgundy card wraps with integrated dustwrapper featuring a central image of a hedgehog carrying a tray of food, titles and decorative cornerpieces in gilt, and an additional fully-illustrated border featuring entwined branches, berries and woodland insects including snails and moths; [unpaginated]; the text printed throughout in black, with copious illustrations on a variety of paper stocks and sizes, some with outer edges decoratively untrimmed; 6 tipped-in plates, all but one in full colour, additional line drawings and watercolours printed directly to pages; decorative gilt borders; and a colourful and intricate centrepiece showing various fairy folk; fine. 

First edition. The book is dedicated to one of the author’s greatest inspirations, Arthur Rackham. 

Charles van Sandwyk was, from a very young age, intrigued by the fairy realm. As a child he would play in the garden of his grandparent’s home, and was fascinated by the world of these ‘little people’. “The flowerbeds were filled with [them]”, he later wrote (in the Folio Society edition of ‘How to see Fairies’). “Near the composting heap, there were no less than three secret Goblin mines, replete with magnificent treasure. Beneath the surface of the pond lived the merpeople, and my poor grandparents didn’t even know it”.  Here, Van Sandwyk provides, with his customary charming drawings, a poem dedicated to the fairy market, where elves and treefolk confer with mice, hedgehogs and bumblebees to buy and sell produce, with such delicacies as fruits, wines and jellies.