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 is annotated: ‘Rather gloomy & patchy. … Red wants steadying badly. … I think either the blue or grey block is too dense. …’ On the second proof Rackham wrote: ‘This is a most unpleasant reproduction altogether. It is better than it was – which is the best I can say of it – & I suppose (with the little alterations made) I shall have to pass it.’ A momentary exasperation with the difficulties of four-colour reproduction flared up when he added: ‘Try to get the Suffragettes to knife the man who invented 4 col. & every living man who won’t swear never to use it again.’ The third proof found him slightly mollified. ‘This is better,’ he wrote; but he still complained of details – ‘I’m afraid the sky must have more attention,’ and ‘This tree must be more like the others.’

The proof of the drawing ‘Adrift’, an illustration of Hans Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ included in the Book of Pictures – it is here reproduced afresh from the original (see ) – shows Rackham at his most despairing. ‘Is it possible anything can be made of this?’ he wrote at the top of the proof. ‘If so, I am afraid I can be of no assistance.’ And at the foot of the proof he lamented: ‘I can’t make any remarks about this. It is too hopelessly muddled. I can only leave it to the block-makers to pull through.’

Rackham’s proofs reveal a perfectionist who drove himself to the limit in order to give his readers the very best of which his own art and contemporary reproduction technique were capable. Ironically, much of his effort was devoted to improving colour subtleties which the layman, seeing only an apparently successful plate, would never have been likely to question. It is almost a relief to discover one proof out of this batch, the drawing (see ) for

in Mother Goose, of which the artist can say ‘This promises well’.