[4], 31 pp. With 34 scenes on 16 full-page hand-coloured wood engravings. Folio, 378 x 275 mm, original gilt-stamped and lettered green cloth boards. Decorative gilt to spine. Second Edition of Doyle's imaginative depiction of the world of fairies and elves. "It is generally felt that Richard Doyle rose to his greatest heights with the graceful clusters of humanized and sentimentalized but endearing little elves he created for In Fairyland" (Gottlieb). These wood engravings are the work of Edmund Evans, printer to the three great children's illustrators of the period: Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway. These Doyle prints represent the most extensive works produced by this superb English colour printer during his long career. "Looking within himself, Doyle found a fantastic but consistently imagined world in which fairies and elves live in the open air among birds, butterflies, snails and beetles as large as themselves" (Ray p. 90). David Bland, in his History of Book Illustration, states that Doyle's control and technical skill at descriptive illustration came together in these coloured "illustrations [which are] more exquisite in colour and design than anything the others [i.e. Crane, Caldecott, and Greenaway] could do" (p. 270). A signed note from Richard Doyle to a Mrs.Taylor tipped onto the front paste-down. "My dear Mrs. Taylor, I am very sorry to say that I am engaged to dine in town tomorrow [Sunday]. I hope, however, that I may be allowed to invite myself to go to you some other Sunday. Always sincerely yours, Richard Doyle." Slight bubbling on the front board, some foxing to the preliminaries and the verso of a few plates, still a fine copy. Coloured plates in order: 1. Frontispiece. A Rehearsal in Fairy Land. Musical Elf teaching the young birds to sing. 2. The Fairy Prince in love. 3. Flirting / Climbing / Stealing / Reposing. 4. Triumphal March of the Elf-King. 5. Cruel Elves / A Dancing Butterfly / The Elf-King asleep / The Tournament. 6. A Race of Snails / Part of the Triumphant Progress. 7. The Fairy Queen's Messenger / Saying "Bo !" to a Beetle / Elf and Owls / Teasing a Butterfly. 8. Enter an Elf in search of a Fairy / He finds her, and this is the consequence / She runs away, and this is his condition 9. Dressing the Baby-Elves / A Messenger by Moonlight / Rejected !. 10. Water-Lilies and Water Fairies. 11. An Evening Ride / A Serenade / Fairy Child's Pay. 12. An Intruder / Flying away / Wood Elves at Play. 13. The Fairy Queen takes an airy drive in a light carriage, a twelve-in-hand, drawn by thoroughbred butterflies. 14. An Elfin Dance by Night. 15. Feasting and fun among the fuchsias / Poor little Birdie teased / Courtship cut short. 16. Asleep in the Moonlight.