Mansfield (Edgar, binder).- Stevenson (Robert Louis) Fables, black & white plates by E.R.Herman with captioned tissue guards, trimmed, bound in vellum, by Edgar Mansfield, titled in dark red-brown ink across spine and upper cover, t.e.g, with another copy of the book in the original cloth, preserved together in modern cloth folder and slip-case, 4to (c.260 x 190mm.), 1914.

⁂ Edgar Mansfield (1907-96) studied art in his native New Zealand before moving to London in 1934 where he studied pottery at the Camberwell School of Art & Crafts and bookbinding at the Central School of Art & Crafts. After serving in the war he returned to London to focus on bookbinding and taught at the London College of Printing from 1948-64, continuing to bind until failing eyesight force him to give up in the mid-1970s. From 1955-68 to he served as the first president of the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders (now Designer Bookbinders).

Mansfield was hugely influential on modern British bookbinding particularly in the development of abstract design and, although this is an early binding in vellum rather than his more usual goatskin with inlays, it shows his interest at this time in lettering. It was bound in 1937 and is the second binding featured in Modern Design in Bookbinding: The Work of Edgar Mansfield published in 1966, illustration p.18.