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 (Description) 

Author: Thornton Niven Wilder. (Clare Leighton, illustrator).
Title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Illustrated Edition.
Publisher: London, New York, Toronto, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1929. First illustrated edition by Clare Leighton
Language: Text in English.
Size: 8 " X 6 ".
Pages: ix-139 pages.
Binding: Attractive and near fine half leather binding by Bayntun-Riviere bindery, finely bound in red morocco leather with cloth on boards (hinges fine) under a protective removable mylar cover. Upper edge gilt. A very beautiful binding!
Content: Near fine content (bright, tight, and clean - as shown). 
Illustrations: Complete with the wonderful 16 woodcuts illustrations by Clare Leighton.

The book: Rare and Attractive First illustrated edition by Clare Leighton of The Bridge of San Luis Rey - It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope bridge in Peru and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who witnesses the accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.

The illustrator: Clare Marie Veronica Leighton, sometimes Clara Ellaline Hope Leighton or Clare Veronica Hope Leighton, (12 April 1898 – 4 November 1989) was an English/American artist, writer, and illustrator, best known for her wood engravings. One of her most notable illustrative endeavors was creating 16 woodcuts for Thornton Wilder's illustrated edition of The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Longmans, Green and Company 1929).

The author: Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.

The binder: George Bayntun was born in 1873 in Bath, England. After an apprenticeship, he began his own bookbinding business in Bath in 1894, binding books by hand with great craftsmanship. Although many binders were using machines in their process, Bayntun refused to use modern techniques.