Green Willow and other Japanese fairy tales by Grace James (1910)

Some of these read beautifully, some are a little more awkward, in a way that I'm coming to expect from volumes like this. James apparently grew up in Japan, and her family was in some way reasonably well-established there. This was her first book, and as far as I can tell, she later moved back to Britain, and became better known for her series of educational stories for children based around the characters John and Mary. There does though seem to be some biographical and bibliographical confusion, so much so that I'm assuming there were two Grace Jameses, one born in 1864 and dying in 1930 that I'm less sure about, and the one who wrote this book and the John and Mary books who didn't die until the early 60s. It will require some extra research to untangle them. Anyway, this one did occasionally revisit her Japanese specialty - a non-fictional summary in the 30s and a volume or two of the series where the children were touched by Japanese subjects. But the handsomeness and pre-war beauty of this volume seems never to have been repeated in her career. The central concerns of many of these tales (very few of which involve fairies by the way, much more often gods and demigods) are lost love, retribution, quests, talismans and the toll of human weakness. The awkward ones are so because the story either seems just to get going and then stops suddenly, or perhaps to threaten a conclusion of note and provide instead somewhat more of a whimper. The final element to mention are the magnificent illustrations by Warwick Goble, which are misty, detailed and tender in exactly the proportion required to adorn these often melancholy, occasionally savage pieces.