14 DECEMBER 1929, Page 35

Christmas Books

IT is impossible to have too many editions of the Tales from Hans Andersen, but it is quite possible to have too many illustrated editions of this book. For illustrating Hans Andersen's stories is no easy task—so much has to be expressed and yet, so simply. But Miss Hester Sainsbury and Messrs. Etchells and Macdonald have between them, we think, produced the perfect Hans Andersen. The type, paper, cover, format and illustrations synthesize admirably. Miss Sainsbury's real Princess on her twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdown beds (with her crown on her bed table), her picture of Lizzie Thumb sitting in the middle of a tulip flower and, indeed, all her illustrations are extremely clever and quite delightful. There is wit and originality in her sense of design. We feel that this will be one of the favourite Christmas books this year. The price is two guineas.