From the publisher:

Maxfield Parrish has become so closely identified with the brilliant blue skies and mauve mountains of his paintings that his bold but subtle black-and-white illustrations have been largely ignored. Yet almost all his early work, which first brought him recognition, was in black and white. It already showed the qualities of design and draftsmanship that would win him wider acclaim in later years: strong composition, boldness of outline and elaborate rendering. The excessive romanticism of some of the calendar paintings had not yet entered his work, and the tendency toward sentimentality was, as always, balanced by humor.