Timlin, William A. - The Ship that Sailed to Mars

4to; new quarter vellum binding, retaining the original papered boards and endpapers; binding completely re-stitched and hinges reinforced; forty-eight plates mounted to grey matte paper, and forty-eight calligraphic text pages similarly mounted to the rectos, the title page leaf being new grey paper, with a mounted facsimile of the original calligraphic text; edges of a few leaves silked, and occasional short edge-tear to the grey paper. Some mottling to boards and endpapers. A pleasing, highly sympathetic restoration of this celebrated work of fantasy from the genre's Golden Age.

Working as an architect in Kimberley, where he had lived since following his parents there in 1912, Timlin also illustrated books of plays and poetry. The Ship that Sailed to Mars drew such attention that film-rights were purchased in the USA, though the film (Get Off the Earth) was never completed. A series of fantasy studies for a further book of the type, to be called The Building of a Fairy City, were started in 1927. ' … An articulate and perceptive reviewer, GR Stevens, writing in the 'Cape Times' 16 Sep 1927, expressed the general feeling aptly when he stated: "He is a smith of fancies, an arrant rebel against machinery … In a world grown old and sick with the tedium of reiteration, Mr Timlin is a damned desirable fellow and it would be less than justice to describe him otherwise."' - Berman's Art & Artists of South Africa, p. 456