Campbell, Colin . The BEGGARSTAFF Posters. 128 pp. with 64 plates in color and b&w and additional b&w illustrations. 4to, cloth. London, Barrie & Jenkins, 1990.

NICHOLSON, William. An Almanac of Twelve Sports. With words by Rudyard Kipling. [15] ff. Illustrated with 12 colour lithographs reproducing Nicholson's original hand-coloured woodcuts. Folio, 313 x 250 mm, bound in original vellum embossed with designs by Nicholson. London: William Heinemann, 1898.

Limited Library edition, printed on Japanese vellum, a tour-de-force of English book-illustrations in the 1890's. The work was extremely well received by contemporary critics and audiences alike, and the Almanac sold "like proverbial hotcakes" according to Colin Campbell (this edition was sold out by 1 January 1898). The illustrations for each month of the year are accompanied by verses written by Rudyard Kipling, who worked in close collaboration with the artist. Campell notes that contemporary audiences were often "dazzled by the formal and technical perfection of Nicholson's work, and Gleeson White echoed the widely held view of xenophobes that the Almanac was a welcome retort to the unnatural, 'foreign' tendencies currently being introduced into England by Aubrey Beardsley and his imitators. Nicholson is 'no decadent with morbid suggestiveness,' wrote White, 'no ultra-precocious "symbolist" or intensely Gothic person.'"

The number of copies of the limited Library edition printed on Japanese vellum is not recorded but a letter to Heinemann dated 27 August 1897 reveals that Russell ordered 250 for the American market. Covers a bit bowed, but an excellent copy.

Campbell, William Nicholson: The Graphic Work 33b (and pp. 44-54). Livingston 145 (error in collation). Grolier, Kipling p. 5.