4to. (260 x200 mm.) Publisher’s original claret cloth, attractively stamped in blind and black, the centre of the upper board gilt-blocked with a Dresser design comprised of a pair of feathers, either side of a torchére mounted with sprigs of laurel [?], the words “Truth, Beauty, Power” stamped in black below, sepia printed floral endpapers; vi, [ii], 167, [1]pp. + 8pp. publisher’s catalogue, 2 chromolithograph plates, including the frontispiece, 184 b/w wood-engraved illustrations distributed throughout the text; the ticket of G.F. Sewell. Printer and Bookseller, Cawley St., Bradford, to the upper margin of the front pastedown, Bradford Church Institute Prize label, partially removed, to the f.f.e.p., dated April 1887, awarded by the Council of the Church Institute to an Edgar Shaw for “Success in Art”, old, neat ink ownership inscription to the recto of the half title “J.D. Pass “Linden Lea” Moseley, Congleton”; pp.7/8 with three small closed tears at the margins, repaired, one or two old ink marks, otherwise a bright copy.

Fourth edition. First published in The Technical Educator in a series of thirty one articles, prior to being issued in book form in 1873. The Bradford Church Institute was designed in a French Gothic style by Andrews and Pepper and constructed between 1871-1873. It contained a library and a lecture hall with the express purpose of encouraging working class men (and later, women) to broaden their education by attending evening and weekend lectures on a variety of subjects, a notion central to both Dresser's and Ruskin's writings and lectures. As such, it is fitting that Edgar Shaw's prize for "Success in Art" should have been a copy of one of Dresser's most popular titles.

Stock number: 1696