Rock Crystal: A Christmas Tale, 1945 Pantheon edition, by Adalbert Stifter.

Written by Adalbert Stifter. Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore. Illustrated by Josef Scharl. First edition thus, 1945. Pantheon Books.

"The Church observes various festivals that are ever dear to the heart. What more gracious than Whitsuntide: more sacred or of deeper significance than Easter. The portentous sadness of Holy Week and exaltation of the Sunday following, accompany us throughout life. One of the most beautiful of Church festivals comes in midwinter when nights are long and days are short, when the sun slants toward earth obliquely and snow mantles the fields: Christmas."

Rock Crystal: A Christmas Tale tells the story of two children who get lost in the Alps on Christmas Eve and have to survive a night in the snow. The book is considered a masterpiece of German literature and has been praised for its realistic depiction of nature and its moral message.

Adalbert Stifter was a 19th-century Austrian writer and painter. He is best known for his novels and stories that depict the beauty and harmony of nature, as well as the moral and spiritual values of human beings. He was also a prominent representative of the Biedermeier style, which emphasized domesticity and sentimentality. Some of his most famous works include Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer), Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters (The Portfolio of My Great-Grandfather), and Bergkristall (Rock Crystal).

Joseph Scharl (1896-1954) was a German painter and sculptor who belonged to the expressionist movement. He studied art in Munich and Berlin, and was influenced by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. He was persecuted by the Nazis for his modernist style and his Jewish ancestry, and fled to Switzerland in 1938. He later moved to New York, where he continued to create abstract and figurative works.

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Condition: Very Good/Very Good. Slipcase decorated with small gold stars: Damp stain along lower edge, front and back; light fading along fore edge. Quarter-bound blue cover boards w/ gold stars and yellow cloth spine: Small damp stain at lower gutter between back fly leaf and pastedown; faint soiling near head of the spine. Pages are clean, undamaged, and complete.