[LAWSON, Robert (1892-1957)]. The Wee Men of Ballywooden.By Arthur Mason. Illustrated by Robert Lawson. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1930. 267 pp., 8vo (235 x 155 mm). Decorated blue cloth with original dust jacket designed by R. Lawson. Condition: covers slightly rubbed with some chipping of dust jacket. Provenance: Bertha Mahoney Miller bookplate. [With:] A fine etching of an elf peeking behind a door. Signed in pencil (105 x 75 mm). From an edition of 50. Framed. Lawson was a prolific book and magazine illustrator, The Wee Men of Ballywooden being his first book assignment. Bertha Mahoney Miller was the editor of The Horn Book, the influential children's book review journal. In 1930, Lawson took up etching of mostly fairy subjects. It was the height of the Depression and few sold, so his friend Munro Leaf wrote a story in less than an hour for Lawson to Illustrate. It was The Story of Ferdinand (1936) that launched Lawson's career as one of America's greatest twentieth-century children's book illustrators.