[First edition, complete with full plate set] Granstrem, Eduard. Little Asya: A Story for Young Children (Kroshka Asya). 1899. In Russian.

Гранстрем, Эдуард Андреевич (1843-1918), составитель. Крошка Ася : рассказ для детей младшего возраста / составил по франц. Э. Гранстрем.
Санкт-Петербург : типография М. М. Стасюлевича, 1899 (дозволено цензурою 1 декабря 1899 года). [4], 152 с., 1 л. фронтиспис (ил.), 7 л. иллюстраций ; 26 см.
Издательский твердый переплет модерн: тисненое золотом и цветным конгревом изображение девочки с куклой среди колосьев пшеницы и мака. Полный комплект иллюстраций.
Первое издание.
Реставрация форзацев, произведенная предыдущим владельцем.
Переплет в хорошем состоянии: потертость по краям и уголкам, небольшие утраты ткани у корешка вверху и внизу, легкие загрязнения на крышках. Блок в хорошем состоянии: возрастное пожелтение и отдельные пятна, титульный лист с легкими загрязнениями по нижнему краю; текст и все иллюстрации полностью читаемы и сохранены.
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Granstem, Eduard Andreevich (1843-1918), compiler. Little Asya : a story for young children / adapted from the French by Eduard Granstrem.
St. Petersburg : M. M. Stasyulevich Press, 1899 (censor's approval dated 1 December 1899). [4], 152 pp., 1 leaf frontispiece (illustration), 7 leaves of plates ; 26 cm.
Publisher's pictorial binding in Art Nouveau style: gilt and color-blocked design of a girl holding a doll amid wheat and poppies. Complete with the full set of illustrations.
First edition.
Endpapers restored by a previous owner.
Binding good: edge and corner wear, small losses to the cloth at the head and foot of the spine, light soiling to the boards. Text block good: age-toning and scattered spotting to the leaves, title page lightly soiled at the lower edge; text and all illustrations complete and fully legible.

A handsome example of the celebrated "gift books" (knigi-podarki) issued by the St. Petersburg publisher Eduard Andreevich Granstrem, whose lavishly illustrated, gilt-stamped children's volumes were later fondly recalled by the poet Igor Severyanin as "Granstrem stamped in gold, gallant cavalier of dreams." Granstrem, who rose from apprentice typesetter at the progressive journal Sovremennik to managing the press of the prominent liberal publisher M. M. Stasyulevich, founded his own imprint for children's and juvenile literature in 1881, specializing in richly produced adaptations of foreign works. Little Asya, adapted from a French original, is a gentle domestic tale following a willful but endearing toddler through the small dramas of nursery life and a summer in the countryside: her demands at the dinner table, a solitary adventure through a field of wheat and poppies that ends in a frightened nanny's search, and her delighted discovery of rabbits and chickens on a country estate. The binding, decorated in the fashionable Art Nouveau manner of the period with a gilt and color-stamped image of the child heroine holding her doll among cornstalks and poppies, exemplifies the visual appeal for which Granstrem's gift editions were prized by contemporary buyers and are prized by collectors today. This is the first edition, complete with the full set of plates; the book was not reissued until a smaller second edition of 1915. It will appeal to collectors of Russian children's illustrated books, fin-de-siècle Russian publishing and binding design, and the output of the Granstrem press.